Removal of Cr (III) from industrial wastewater using coconut shell carbon and limestone as adsorbent

Abstract

Agricultural waste materials gained attention among researchers to study the effectiveness of adsorbent media in heavy metal treatment. In this study, application of coconut shell carbon and limestone as modified adsorbent was used to remove Cr (III) from industrial wastewater. Synthetic industrial wastewater sample containing 2 mg/L of Cr (III) was prepared using distilled water and standard solution of Cr (III). Batch adsorption study was conducted to determine the effect of varied contact time (0 to 120 minutes) and pH (pH3 to pH7). The result shows that at 60 minutes of contact hour, the removal of Cr (III) from the synthetic industrial wastewater is about 98% with optimum adsorption capacity is 0.000019 mg/g at 250 rpm of agitation speed in pH5 as optimum pH. The kinetic data obtained specified that the data follow closely the pseudo-second-order. Thus, this indicates that mixing coconut shell carbon and limestone as a modified adsorbent has a potential in reducing Cr (III) concentration in industrial wastewater.