Heavy Metal Removal from Aqueous Solution using Agricultural Waste

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Biosorption has gained important credibility during recent years because of its ecofriendly nature, excellent performance, and low cost domestic technique for remediation even heavily metal loaded waste water. The potential of cheap cellulose containing natural materials like rice husk was assessed for Ni (II) and Cr (VI) adsorption from aqueous solutions. The effect of pH, contact time, sorbent dose, initial metal ion concentration on the uptake of nickel and chromium has been studied in batch experiments. Maximum nickel and chromium removal was observed at pH 6.0 and at pH 2.0 respectively. The efficiency of rice husk for Ni(II) and Cr (VI) removal was 51.8% and 71% for dilute solutions at 20 g/L adsorbent dose respectively. FTIR, SEM and EDAX were recorded before and after adsorption to explore the number and position of the functional groups available for Ni (II) and Cr (VI) binding on to the studied adsorbent and changes in surface morphology and elemental constitution of the adsorbent. The results revealed that nickel and chromium is considerably adsorbed on rice husk and it could be an economical method for the removal of nickel and chromium from wastewaters containing lower concentration of these heavy metals.

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Journal: TechConnect Briefs
Volume: Technical Proceedings of the 2011 Clean Technology Conference and Trade Show
Published: June 13, 2011
Pages: 244 - 247
Industry sector: Energy & Sustainability
Topic: Water Technologies
ISBN: 978-1-4398-8189-7