A breakthrough biosorbent in removing heavy metals: Equilibrium, kinetic, thermodynamic and mechanism analyses in a lab-scale study

TLDR: This novel MMBB can effectively be utilized as an adsorbent to remove heavy metal ions from aqueous solutions and calculated thermodynamic parameters indicated feasible, spontaneous and exothermic biosorption process.

About: This article is published in Science of The Total Environment.The article was published on 2016-01-15 and is currently open access. It has received 125 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Biosorption & Adsorption.

Figures

Fig. 1. Biosorption capacity of different agro-industrial wastes and by-products.

Fig. 4. Comparison of (a) individual and (b) total metal ions adsorbed and released in biosorption process (initial heavy metal conc.: 50 mg/L).

Table 4. Biosorption capacities of various adsorbents.

Table 3. Isotherm constants of two- and three-parameter models for Cd(II), Cu(II), Pb(II) and Zn(II) adsorption (initial metal conc.: 10–500 mg/L).

Table 1. FTIR spectra and SEM images of (a) unloaded and (b) metal loaded-biosorbents.

Fig. 5. Van't Hoff plots for Cd(II), Cu(II), Pb(II) and Zn(II) adsorption(initial pH 5.5 ± 0.1; initial metal conc.: 1–50 mg/L; contact time: 3 h; biosorbent dose: 5 g/L).

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What have the authors contributed in "A breakthrough biosorbent in removing heavy metals: equilibrium, kinetic, thermodynamic and mechanism analyses in a lab-scale study" ?

For Cu ( II ) and Zn ( II ), the Khan isotherm describes better biosorption conditions while for Cd ( II ) and Pb ( II ), the Sips model was found to provide the best correlation of the biosorption equilibrium data.