Treatment of Wastewater Contaminated with Cu(II) by Adsorption onto Acacia Activated Carbon

Abstract

In this study, the adsorption of Cu(II) ions from aqueous solutions onto Activated Carbon prepared from Acacia leaves. (AAC) was investigated. The experiments were performed in a batch system at different parameters (contact time, adsorbent dosage, initial concentration of adsorbate, agitation rate, temperature, particle diameter, and solution pH) were varied in order to establish the optimum conditions for copper removal using AAC, and the copper ions adsorption capacity was evaluated after equilibrium was attained. The results indicate that the removal was effective at low Cu(II) concentrations and a natural pH value, and the optimum conditions for Cu(II) removal operation from the synthetic solution investigated were 120 minutes, 300 rpm, and 0.375 mm as a contact time, agitation rate, and particle diameter respectively, and pH value equals to 6 at the temperature 30 1 oC. Also, the adsorbent dose of 0.5 g/100 ml was sufficient for the high removal of Cu(II) from the solution for studied batches which reaches up to 95.3, 77.42, 53.4, 37.6, 26.5, 18.4, 15.4, and 12.15% respectively for studied batches 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 800, and 1000 ppm respectively. The results obtained from this study show that the AAC can be used as a low-cost adsorbent for the complete removal of Cu(II) from an aqueous solution especially at low concentrations.