Recovery of sugarcane bagasse as adsorbent for chromium (Cr) (III) removal

Abstract

The aim of the study was to explore the ability of bioactivated carbon on Cr III removal. Chromium (III) is one of the heavy metals, toxic and harmful for human being causing spread pulmonary fibrosis disease. Adsorption is one of the alternatives and an effective purification and separation technique used in industrial wastewater treatment. Bioactivated carbon was obtained from sugarcane bagasse based agricultural biomass waste by furnace dried carried out at 400°C for 2h, activated by chemical using phosphoric acid. Bioactivated carbons were used to treat chromium (III) from artificial wastewater containing chromium. Cr (III) removal was investigated by the batch process with adsorbent dose, contact time and particle size to finding optimum conditions as an experiment variable. Bioactivated carbon resulting have surface area of 309.44 and 3133.82 m2/g, respectively for sizes 150 and 200 mesh using BET measurement. The predominance of carbon achieving 80.24%, 18.68% and 1.08% respectively for element C, O and Si, identified by SEM-EDX analyser. The optimum condition of the batch adsorption achieving 99.9% chromium removal, resulting from operation condition in 30 minutes contact time using 6 g adsorbent 200 mesh.