Adsorptive Removal of Cobalt and Cadmium by Using Bagasse Pith

Abstract

The wastewater of industries flows which contain heavy metal ions are manufactured from different industries. The heavy metals ions are amongst the mainly dangerous of the elemental pollutants and are of particular concern as their increasing level in the environment represents a serious threat to human health, living resources and ecological systems. Adsorption is one of the most promising techniques for the removal of cobalt and cadmium from water and wastewaters. The sugarcane bagasse pith is developed from locally sugarcane industries to measure the suitability remediates cobalt and cadmium contaminated water. Bagasse pith was pre-treated with 0.1 N NaOH followed by 0.1 N H2SO4 for the present work before its use. Batch adsorption experiments were carried out to study the adsorption of cobalt and cadmium on sugarcane bagasse pith sorbent taking into account the effect of initial
concentration, contact time, adsorbent dosage, pH and temperature. The experimental maximum adsorption removal of bagasse pith was found to be 99.8% and 93% for cobalt and cadmium at the higher adsorbent dosage of 10g/100ml.
The removal of cobalt ions decreased with increasing in pH, thus pH of 2, which gives maximum removal of cobalt, was shown as 97.4 %. The maximum removal of cadmium (81.5%) was observed at optimum pH 6 for bagasse pith. The adsorbent material which shows a good adsorption capacity for both the metal ions. The processes of adsorption on bagasse pith were evaluated by using Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models. The values of correlation coefficient of Langmuir and Freundlich models for cobalt and cadmium were found to be 0.999 and 0.9977 respectively. The Langmuir adsorption model exhibited excellent indication of adsorption data than the Freundlich isotherm model.