Removing Heavy Metals Through Different Types of Soils and Marble Powder Found in Oman

Abstract

In this research, adsorption followed by filtration was used for removing heavy metals (Cu, Zn, Mn, and Cr) from the polluted water. Three types of soils (silty, sandy and clay) and three types of marble powder (pure, impure, marble-granite mix) were used as an adsorbent. The soil and marble samples were collected from different regions of Oman. The maximum adsorption obtained was 96.01% for Zn using pure marble powder and the minimum adsorption obtained was 6.70% for Mn using impure marble powder. Through different soils, the maximum adsorption of 88.61% was achieved for Zn using clay and the lowest one is for Cr 16.51% using silty soil. The results suggest that among the marble powders, the pure ones show the maximum (96.01% for Zn) and marble-granite show the minimum (Mn 6.70%) adsorption performance. Among the adsorbents, Zn is the best adsorbate (96.01%) while the worst among the group is Mn, which merely adsorbed 6.70% with the selected adsorbents.

Keywords

• marble powder
• adsorption
• clay soil
• Heavy metals removal
• potable water
• sandy soil
• silty soil