Original Articles
1J. Annie Kamala Florence, 2Th
Abstract
Removal of toxic metal contaminants from wastewater has been a cause of major concern. Much attention has recently been focused on various biosorbent materials. The present study aimed to prepare the biosorbent, chitosan/kenaf fiber bio-composite for the removal of toxic heavy metal Nickel(II) ions from the synthetic wastewater. The prepared adsorbent was characterized using FTIR and XRD to study its suitability and confirms the formation of the biocomposite by the chemical versus physical changes. Adsorption was done under batch mode to investigate the parameters such as initial metal ion concentration, contact time, adsorbent dose and pH which affects the adsorption process. The maximum adsorption capacity of chitosan can be estimated to be greater than 70.55 mg·g-1 for Ni(II) ions and the removal was high at pH 5. The experimental data was modeled using the Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption isotherms and the adsorption kinetics were tested using pseudo-first-order, pseudo-second-order and intraparticle diffusion models. Kinetic studies showed that the adsorption followed pseudo-second-order reaction with regard to the intraparticle diffusion rate. The results were discussed.