Biosorption of Ni2+ and Cr3+ in synthetic sewage: Adsorption capacities of water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes)

Abstract

Water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) is an aquatic weed that is causing numerous adverse effects on freshwater bodies. Developing countries are still battling on how to control the growth of this weed without damaging other aquatic lives important to man. Literatures have revealed that most developing countries are still discharging untreated sewage containing heavy metals into waterbodies due to economic and technical constraints in handling conventional methods of treating heavy metals. Hence, the research investigated the possibility of using water hyacinth to adsorb heavy metals (Ni²⁺ and Cr³⁺) from sewage before discharging into waterbodies in order to solve two major problems faced in the aquatic environment, at minimal cost. This was achieved by using the said weed (water hyacinth) to treat Ni²⁺ and Cr³⁺ solutions prepared in the lab. Results showed that the adsorption process for both ions occurred on heterogeneous surfaces while the mechanism of adsorption followed Pseudo 2nd–order kinetics. The Freundlich, Langmuir and Temkin adsorption capacities for Ni²⁺ are 19.6925 L/g, 0.7470 L/mg and 1.1093 L/mg respectively while for Cr³⁺ are 16.814 L/g, 0.7011 L/mg and 0.9623 L/mg respectively. However, the heat of sorption for Ni²⁺ is 96.906 KJ/mol while that of Cr³⁺ is 98.749 KJ/mol. Furthermore, FT-IR analysis identified seven functional groups involved in the binding sites with more of hydroxyl group (O–H) from alcohol and carboxylic acid. It was concluded that water hyacinth could be used as a potential bio-adsorbent of metal ions.

Keywords

• Freundlich
• Halsey
• Harkin-Jura
• Langmuir
• Temkin

References

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