Removal of copper (II) from wastewater using green vegetable waste derived activated carbon: An approach to equilibrium and kinetic study

Myalowenkosi I. Sabela; Kwanele Kunene; Suvardhan Kanchi; Nokukhanya M. Xhakaza; Ayyappa Bathinapatla; Phumlane Mdluli; Deepali Sharma; Krishna Bisetty

Arabian Journal of Chemistry (Dec 2019)

Removal of copper (II) from wastewater using green vegetable waste derived activated carbon: An approach to equilibrium and kinetic study

Myalowenkosi I. Sabela,
Kwanele Kunene,
Suvardhan Kanchi,
Nokukhanya M. Xhakaza,
Ayyappa Bathinapatla,
Phumlane Mdluli,
Deepali Sharma,
Krishna Bisetty

Affiliations

Myalowenkosi I. Sabela: Corresponding authors. Fax: +27 86 6740243.; Department of Chemistry, Durban University of Technology, P.O. Box 1334, Durban 4000, South Africa
Kwanele Kunene: Department of Chemistry, Durban University of Technology, P.O. Box 1334, Durban 4000, South Africa
Suvardhan Kanchi: Corresponding authors. Fax: +27 86 6740243.; Department of Chemistry, Durban University of Technology, P.O. Box 1334, Durban 4000, South Africa
Nokukhanya M. Xhakaza: Department of Chemistry, Durban University of Technology, P.O. Box 1334, Durban 4000, South Africa
Ayyappa Bathinapatla: Department of Chemistry, Durban University of Technology, P.O. Box 1334, Durban 4000, South Africa
Phumlane Mdluli: Department of Chemistry, Durban University of Technology, P.O. Box 1334, Durban 4000, South Africa
Deepali Sharma: Department of Chemistry, Durban University of Technology, P.O. Box 1334, Durban 4000, South Africa
Krishna Bisetty: Corresponding authors. Fax: +27 86 6740243.; Department of Chemistry, Durban University of Technology, P.O. Box 1334, Durban 4000, South Africa

Journal volume & issue: Vol. 12, no. 8
pp. 4331 – 4339

Abstract

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The present paper reports on the use of modified activated carbon as an environmental friendly adsorbent, obtained from a green vegetable waste, for the removal of copper (II) from wastewaters. The activated carbon was prepared from green vegetable waste by KOH treatment for 24 h at 60 °C and thereafter evaluated by studying the effects of pH, contact time, dosage and initial concentration and optimized in the batch processing mode. The morphological and chemical changes in activated carbon were fully characterized by SEM, TGA, DSC, FTIR techniques. The Langmuir isotherm, yielded adsorption capacity of 75.0 mg g−1 for a pseudo-second-order model. Overall, these results suggest that green vegetable waste derived activated carbon as a low-cost adsorbent for the removal of copper (II) will be useful for future scale-up for the tertiary treatment of wastewater. Keywords: Green vegetable waste activated carbon (GVW-AC), Copper (II), Adsorption, Flame Atomic Absorption Spectrometer (FAAS), Wastewater

Published in Arabian Journal of Chemistry

ISSN: 1878-5352 (Print)
Publisher: Elsevier
Country of publisher: Netherlands
LCC subjects: Science: Chemistry
Website: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/arabian-journal-of-chemistry/

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