Adsorption Process of Iron, Cadmium, Copper, Lead from Aqueous Solution using Palm Bunch Adsorbent

Abstract

The potential of an agro-based industrial waste, dry empty oil palm bunch (DEOPB), obtained from a local oil palm processing mill was explored to treat effluent from a petrochemical plant. The adsorbent was subjected to pyrolysis and chemically activated using a 0.1mol hydrochloric acid (HCl). The adsorption behaviors of iron, copper and cadmium were found to obey Pseudo Second Order kinetic model, Brunauer, Emmet and Teller (BET) and the Langmuir isotherm models were used to fit the iron, copper and cadmium adsorption isotherm onto the DEOPB activated carbon with their equilibrium capacities agreeing with experimental data except for the lead component that showed no effect. The heavy metals contaminants investigated using this technique was found to have been removed from the wastewater stream in the following percentage efficiency: iron; 57%, copper; 99.6% and  cadmium; 90%  but was ineffective in the removal of the lead component as its concentration remained unchanged throughout the experiment. The locally produced activated carbon was subjected to laboratory analysis and its properties (Density; 0.369g/m³, Particle Size; 0.18mm, Ash Content; 5.73%ww, Porosity; 90%, Surface Area; 691.85 m²/g) were found to favorably compare with commercial activated carbon.

Keywords: heavy metal contaminants, effluent, multi-layer adsorption, bio-adsorbent.