Adsorption of mercury (II) from liquid solutions using modified activated carbons

Abstract

Mercury is one of the most toxic metals present in the environment. Adsorption has been proposed among the technologies for mercury abatement. Activated carbons are universal adsorbents which have been found to be a very effective alternative for mercury removal from water. The effectiveness with which a contaminant is adsorbed by the solid surface depends, among other factors, on the charge of the chemical species in which the contaminant is in solution and on the net charge of the adsorbent surface which depend on the pH of the adsorption system. In this work, activated carbon from carbonized eucalyptus wood was used as adsorbent. Two sulphurization treatments by impregnation with sulphuric acid and with carbon disulphide, have been carried out to improve the adsorption capacity for mercury entrapment. Batch adsorption tests at different temperatures and pH of the solution were carried out. The influence of the textural properties, surface chemistry and operation conditions on the adsorption capacity, is discussed.

A Review on Removal of Heavy Metals from Water by Adsorption

“…The maximum adsorption capacity was found on initial concentration of 107mg/L. H. S. Silva et. al., (2010) [28] Activated carbon from carbonized eucalyptus wood is an adequate adsorbent for mercury removal from aqueous solutions and its adsorbent efficiency can be enhanced by the modifications of its surface chemistry.…”

“…H. S. Silva et. al., (2010) [28] Activated carbon from carbonized eucalyptus wood is an adequate adsorbent for mercury removal from aqueous solutions and its adsorbent efficiency can be enhanced by the modifications of its surface chemistry. The surface sulphurization treatments produce important variations in the zero charge point, in the textural properties of the solid basically specific surface and pore size distribution and in the number of acid and basic surface groups.…”

Remoción de mercurio en lixiviados de un relleno sanitario empleando carbón activado impregnado con azufre

“…El área superficial específica del carbón impregnado con azufre es ligeramente superior que la reportada para materiales similares (Anoop-Krishnan y Anirudhan, 2002;Mohan, Gupta, Srivastava y Chander, 2001). Mediante la impregnación con CS 2 , se ha logrado incrementar el contenido de azufre en un carbón activado hasta el 4,1 % en masa (Silva et al, 2010), valor superior al obtenido en este trabajo. Las diferencias en área superficial específica y cantidad de azufre impregnado en el carbón activado se asocian a las características químicas de la superficie del carbón (Anoop-Krishnan y Anirudhan, 2002).…”

Cladophora sp. Biosorption of Metal-contaminated Water

“…These reported results were close to the results obtained in this study. Though the cation removal efficiencies of the other adsorbents such as activated carbon from carbonized eucalyptus wood, rice husk ash and 2-mercaptobenzi-midazole loaded natural clay were also high (> 90 -> 99 %), they are most efficient at high initial mercury concentrations (40-100 mg L -1 ) [36][37][38], thus they are not suitable for the intended purpose of this study, since Hg is present in very low concentrations in the environment. The pseudo second order model ( Figure 4(b)) showed the best linearization with R 2 = 1 compared to the pseudo first order model (R 2 = 0.9223) (Figure 4(a)).…”