Sorption studies of toxic cations on ginger root adsorbent

• Published in: Journal of industrial and engineering chemistry (Seoul, Korea) Vol. 76; pp. 133 - 140
• Main Authors: Shooto, Ntaote David, Naidoo, Eliazer Bobby, Maubane, Manoko
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 25.08.2019; 한국공업화학회
• Subjects: Adsorption; Equilibrium; Ginger; Heavy metals; Kinetics; 화학공학; Ginger; Kinetics; Adsorption; Equilibrium; Heavy metals
• ISSN: 1226-086X; 1876-794X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jiec.2019.02.027

This research reports the feasibility of using pristine ginger root (PGR), base treated ginger root (BTGR) and acid treated ginger root (ATGR) adsorbents to simultaneously remove Cu(II), Pb(II) and Ni(II) ions from aqueous solution under different experimental parameters by batch method. Different system parameters such as the effect of metal concentration, time dependent studies and temperature effect were evaluated. The sorption trend indicated that the pretreated adsorbents; ATGR and BTGR had better performance than PGR. The sorption of Cu(II), Ni(II) and Pb(II) ions onto BTGR is 16.3, 18.9 and 17.6 mg/g onto ATGR is 15.3, 18.6 and 17.5 mg/g and onto PGR is 1.8, 1.9 and 1.9 mg/g respectively. The overall Cu/Ni/Pb ions sorption trend for the adsorbents is BTGR > ATGR > PGR. Freundlich isotherm best describes all the sorption processes in this work. The sorption rate results of Ni(II) ions was much faster than those of Pb(II) and Cu(II) in all the adsorbents. The good unity fits of PSO data suggests that Cu(II), Ni(II) and Pb(II) is better described by this model and the sorption mechanism is based on electrostatic interactions and adsorption sites. The ΔG° data gave negative values for all samples; suggesting that the sorption processes were spontaneous. The positive ΔS° figures indicated that the degree of freedom for Cu(II), Ni(II) and Pb(II) ions was not restricted on PGR, ATGR and BTGR adsorbents.