Abatement of Pb(II) ion from the Wastewater Using Surface Coated Activated Carbon Derived From the Bark of Ziziphus mauritiana: Kinetic and Equilibrium Study

Abstract

Water contamination is a major concerned to the human health. Most of the ground water is polluted with heavy metals, has become a serious problem today. Heavy metals are poisonous and non-biodegradable environmental pollutants that seriously threaten human health. Particularly, Pb is highly toxic and directly associate with health risk such as damage to kidney, liver and central nervous system. Thus there has been an honest deal of attention given to advance technologies for junking of heavy metal ions from contaminated water. Adsorption is one in every of the effective methods for removal of toxic heavy metal like Pb(II). In this study, the removal of Pb(II) from wastewater using chitosan based activated carbon deduced from the bark of Ziziphus mauritiana was estimated . The prepared chitosan coated activated carbon were verified by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The concentration of Pb²⁺ ions were measured by flame-atomic absorption spectroscopy. Batch experiments were conducted to search out the influence of operating variables like pH effect, contact time, adsorbent dosage and initial concentration. The amount of Pb(II) adsorbed was found to vary with pH of the solution and maximum adsorption was found at a pH value of 5.5. The extent of Pb(II)  uptake (mg/g ) was found to increase with increase in initial concentration and contact time. Equilibrium was reached at 130 min. The experimental adsorption data were fitted to the Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption model and therefore the maximum adsorption capacity (q_m) of CCZMAC was found to be 13.346 mg/g. Thus this disquisition verifies that the new advanced chitosan coated activated carbon prepared from the bark of Ziziphus mauritiana as valuable material used as cost effective and less energy intensive adsorbent for the removal of Pb(II) from aqueous solution and wastewater waste with none chemical treatment, creating it user friendly bio-sorbent.