Low cost readily available adsorbents and their use in the removal of heavy metal pollutants

Abstract

Heavy metal pollutants released from industrial effluents to water bodies are highly toxic, non degradable and accumulate in living organism through food chain and cause harmful effects on human beings. In the present work adsorption through batch and column mode studies have been undertaken for the removal of cadmium and chromium ions from aqueous solution. The adsorbents have been prepared by acid and pyrolysis treatment from the woods of two common trees native to Tamil Nadu (Acacia Nilotica Indica and Leucaena Glauca Benth). It has been proved that the adsorption process followed pseudo-second order kinetics and pore diffusion process controlled the rate of the adsorption. The Langmuir and Redlich-Peterson isotherm models more closely predicted the experimental data. The study also revealed that the acid and pyrolysis processed woods of these two trees can be used as low cost adsorbents for the removal of cadmium and chromium ions.