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239 © IWA Publishing 2011 Water Quality Research Journal of Canada | 46.3 | 2011
Adsorption of nickel from aqueous solutions using
low cost biowaste adsorbents
Harminder Singh and V. K. Rattan
ABSTRACT
This work has been carried out to check the ability of three biowastes, viz. corn cob ash (CCA),
mango stone ash (MSA) and orange peel powder (OPP), to remove Ni(II) ions from aqueous solution.
The surface environment of the adsorbents was characterized by Fourier transformation infrared
spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis which showed that these adsorbents
contain favorable organic groups, such as, amido, amino, hydroxyls, carboxyl groups, etc., on their
surface and have uniform characteristics in their surface morphology. The particle sizes for the three
screened biowastes were found to be in the range of 1.5–4, 0.7–4.5 and 15–35 μm for CCA, MSA and
OPP, respectively, as revealed by SEM. The effect of different system variables, viz. adsorbent dose,
initial metal ion concentration and pH, were studied. Both Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption
models were suitable for describing the sorption of Ni(II) on all three adsorbents used. The maximum
sorption capacities of CCA, OPP and MSA used in this study were 107.4, 14.0, and 26.6 mg/g,
respectively, for Ni(II) ions at optimum adsorbent dose.
doi: 10.2166/wqrjc.2011.024
Harminder Singh (corresponding author)Department of Chemistry,Lovely Professional University,Punjab 144402,IndiaE-mail: [email protected]
V. K. RattanDepartment of Chemical Engineering and
Technology,Punjab University,Chandigarh 160014,India
Key words | adsorption, biowastes, Ni(II)
INTRODUCTION
Water is an essential raw material in almost all manufactur-
ing plants, though only a small amount of it may appear in
the final product. The remainder becomes a waste material
contaminant to a smaller or larger degree, depending on
its usage in the plant. After entering the natural water
resources it contaminates them (Pandey & Carney ).
Toxic metals (Pb, Cu, Cd, Cr, Ni, etc.) are present in the
effluents of a variety of industries such as electroplating,
leather tanning, cement, mining, dyeing, fertilizer and pho-
tography and causes severe environmental and public
health problems.
A number of treatment methods for the removal of
metal ions from aqueous solutions have been reported,
mainly reduction, ion exchange, electrodialysis, electroche-
mical precipitation, evaporation, solvent extraction,
reverse osmosis, chemical precipitation and adsorption
(Patterson ). Most of these methods suffer from draw-
backs such as high capital and operational cost or the
disposal of the residual metal sludge.
Adsorption onto solid adsorbents can effectively remove
pollutants from both aqueous and gaseous streams and
therefore has considerable environmental significance. Acti-
vated carbon, the most popular adsorbent, has been
traditionally used for the removal of odor, taste and color,
which are designated as trace pollutants. Its high adsorptive
capacity and versatility have expanded its application to the
treatment of numerous industrial waste streams. Other com-
mercial adsorbents, having increased reversibility, have
been reviewed (Thomas & Crittenden ) and although
their versatility and adsorption capacity are generally less
than those of activated carbon, they are advantageous for
certain applications. Such low cost adsorbents (Adrian
et al. ; Ho &Mckay a) have found use in laboratory
scale for the treatment of various pollutants from water and
wastewater.
A number of low-cost adsorbents such as natural neem
(Azadirachta indica) sawdust and acid-treated sawdust
(Krishnaiah et al. ), sphagnum moss peat (Ho &
240 H. Singh & V. K. Rattan | Adsorption of nickel from aqueous solutions Water Quality Research Journal of Canada | 46.3 | 2011
Mckay b), thai kaolin and ballclay (Chantawong et al.
), acid-treated lignin from the pulp and paper industry’s
black liquor (Pérez et al. ), activated biological sludges
(Lombrarna et al. ; Aksu & Akpínar ; Aksu et al.
), glacial till soil (Al-Hamdan & Reddy ), activated
carbon prepared from almond husk (Hasar ), bagasse
fly ash (Gupta et al. ; Mall et al. ; Garg et al. ),
coir pith (Sudersanan et al. ; Thiravetyan et al. ), par-
tially converted crab shell waste (Dorris et al. ), husk of
Lathyrus sativus (Guha et al. ), starch, activated char-
coal, wood charcoal and clay (Choksi & Joshi ), acid-
treated rice bran (Zafar et al. ), rubber wood ash
(Gupta et al. ), sawdust (Shukla et al. ), tea factory
waste (Malkoc & Nuhoglu ) and Turkish fly ashes
(Bayat ) have been used to remove nickel from aqueous
solutions and industrial wastewaters.
In the present study, comparison of the adsorption
potential of three low cost bio-sorbents, viz. mango
stone ash (MSA), orange peel powder (OPP) and corn
cob ash (CCA), for the removal of nickel from synthetic
aqueous solutions has been checked. The focus of this
study is to use the biowastes without any pretreatment
so as to make the process economically more viable.
Surface properties of these adsorbents have also been
checked with the help of Fourier transformation infrared
spectroscopy (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy
(SEM).
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Adsorbents preparation
Adsorbents used in this study are MSA, OPP and CCA,
which are waste materials and abundantly available in
rural areas of India.
MSA: mango stones were collected from the nearby
juice vendors in Chandigarh city. These were washed prop-
erly with distilled water and cleaned from any dust and pulp
of mango. Then these stones were dried at room tempera-
ture. These were then burned in air for 5 h as any other
fuel is burned in the rural areas of India, as this study is
aimed at the low cost adsorbent preparation and use of
any other method can cause an increase in the cost.
OPP: orange peels were collected from the nearby juice
vendors as it is considered as a waste by them. They were
dried at room temperature and then washed well with dis-
tilled water and again dried. Then the orange peels were
powdered.
CCA: corn cobs were collected from the nearby villages,
dried and washed with distilled water. Then these were
burned in air for 5 h.
These adsorbents were stored in an air-tight container
for further use. All the above-mentioned adsorbents were
sieved through an I.S.70 mesh screen (70 μm) prior to
their use.
Fourier transformation infrared spectroscopy
It was very important to find out various functional groups
present on the surface of the adsorbent, so that possible
interactions between the adsorbent and metal ions can be
explained. Therefore FTIR spectroscopy was performed for
all the adsorbents by using an FTIR spectrophotometer
(Perkin Elmer RXI spectrum). KBr discs (150 mg) contain-
ing approximately 2% of the adsorbent samples were
prepared just before recording the FTIR spectra in the
range of 400–4,000 cm�1 and with a resolution of 2 cm�1.
The resulting spectra were the average of 16 scans.
Scanning electron microscopy
The surface morphology was determined using a JEOL JSM-
600 SEM.
Adsorption studies
All of the chemical reagents used in this study were of
analytical grade. A stock solution of Ni(II) of 1,000 mg/L
concentration was prepared by dissolving nickel sulfate
in distilled water. All working solutions were prepared by
diluting the stock solution with distilled water. The pH
adjustments were made using sulfuric acid and sodium
hydroxide.
Batch experimental studies were carried out with a
known weight of adsorbent and 50 mL working solution
of different concentration range (50–500 mg/L) in the
100 mL measuring flasks. Although this concentration
241 H. Singh & V. K. Rattan | Adsorption of nickel from aqueous solutions Water Quality Research Journal of Canada | 46.3 | 2011
range is much higher than Ni would be in most effluents,
high concentrations helped in minimizing the error in the
estimation of nickel spectrophotometrically. These flasks
were shaken on a wrist shaker at 200 rpm for 1 h. After
this, the flasks were kept in desiccators for 24 h with
occasional shaking. The basic aim of this study was to
check the adsorption potential of biowastes used without
any pretreatment and for this purpose only 24 h time was
used. This time was sufficient to achieve equilibrium. After
equilibration, the adsorbent was separated by filtration
through Whatman’s paper no. 40 and the aqueous-phase
concentration of the metal ion was analyzed by using stan-
dard spectrophotometric methods by producing a more
intense color using dimethylglyoxime (detection limit up to
100 μg/50 mL) using a Hitachi 330 UV–VIS spectropho-
tometer (Basset et al. ). The sorption experiments have
been carried out in duplicate. Standard deviation and
analytical errors are calculated and the maximum error is
found to be ±5%. Error bars representing 95% confidence
interval are shown in the figures wherever necessary.
The above procedure was repeated with different adsor-
bent doses (10, 20 and 30 g/L) to check the effect of
adsorbent dose. To find the effect of pH on the adsorption
of Ni(II), adsorption studies were performed at different
pH values in the range of 1–10 taking 1 g each of the adsor-
bent in 50 mL solutions of 500 mg/L Ni(II) solution at ten
different pH values.
The sorption equilibrium (Qe) uptake capacity in mg/g,
for each sample is calculated according to mass balance
on the metal ion expressed as
Qe ¼ Ci � Ce
m
� �v ð1Þ
where Ci and Ce are, respectively, initial and equilibrium
concentrations of Ni(II), m is the mass of the adsorbent
and v is the volume of the solution in litres (Krishnaiah
et al. ).
Adsorption isotherms
The adsorption isotherm is a relatively simplemethod for deter-
mining the feasibility of using an adsorbent for a particular
application. The liquid phase isotherm shows the distribution
of adsorbate between the adsorbed phase and solution phase
at equilibrium. It is a plot of the amount of adsorbate adsorbed
per unit weight of adsorbent (Qe) versus the concentration of
adsorbate remaining in solution (Ce).
Adsorption isotherms on different adsorbents are pre-
sented as Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. The former
shows initial rapid adsorption tending to be almost constant
at higher concentrations.
The linear form of the Langmuir isotherm:
1Qe
¼ 1Q
þ 1bQ
1Ce
ð2Þ
The plots of 1/Qe and 1/Ce for Ni(II) at different adsor-
bent doses are drawn. From the slope and intercept, the
values of constants Q and b can be calculated. The constant
Q signifies the adsorption capacity (mg/g) and b relates to
the energy of adsorption (L/mg).
The essential characteristic of the Langmuir equation is
expressed in terms of a dimensionless separation factor RL
(Namasivayam et al. ) and is defined as
RL ¼ 11þ bCo
ð3Þ
where Co is the highest initial metal ion concentration (mg/L)
and b is the Langmuir constant. This parameter indicates the
isotherm shape according to the following adsorption charac-
teristics: RL> 1 unfavorable; RL¼ 1 corresponds to linear;
0<RL< 1 is favorable and RL¼ 0 is irreversible.
The linearized Freundlich isotherm is given by
logQe ¼ logKF þ 1nlogCe ð4Þ
Values of log Qe and log Ce are plotted for the Ni(II)
system to be studied at different adsorbent doses. From the
intercept and slope the values of Freundlich constants KF
and n can be calculated. The KF parameter is relative to
adsorption capacity and n refers to the process intensity
(Gupta & Ali ). This is frequently used for the interpret-
ation of adsorption from solutions because of its simplicity.
Generally, straight-line plots can be obtained by making use
of the empirical Freundlich equation.
242 H. Singh & V. K. Rattan | Adsorption of nickel from aqueous solutions Water Quality Research Journal of Canada | 46.3 | 2011
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Characterization of the adsorbents
FTIR of CCA
The FTIR spectrum of CCA (Figure 1(a)) shows a broad
absorption band at 3,378.4 cm�1, clearly indicating the pres-
ence of �OH groups and �NH groups. A peak at 2,361.1 is
due to C55C stretch. A sharp peak at 1,653.3 cm�1 confirms
the presence of a C55O group. A bend of N–H at 1,559 cm�1
confirms the presence of amide (CONH2) in the adsorbent.
Peaks at 1,071.6 and 1,007 cm�1 in the FTIR spectra of CCA
can be assigned to the stretching vibrations of C–N and C–O
groups, respectively.
FTIR of MSA
In the FTIR spectrum of MSA (Figure 1(b)), a broad absorp-
tion band present at 3,377.4 cm�1 reveals the presence of
�OH and �NH groups in MSA. Peaks present at 2,922.7
and 2,365.9 cm�1 are due to the stretching of C–H and
C55C groups, respectively. An absorption peak around
1,568 cm�1 indicates the presence of N–H group. The
absorption peaks at 1,115.8 and 1,053.7 cm�1 can be
assigned to C–N and C–O stretching, respectively.
FTIR of OPP
The FTIR spectrum (Figure 1(c)) of OPP shows the broad
stretching absorption band at 3,390.1 cm�1 revealing the
presence of alcoholic and/or phenolic �OH or N–H
groups (Akar et al. ). The band at 2,924.5 cm�1 may
be attributed to C–H stretching (Selatnia et al. ). The
C¼O stretch at 1,746.5 cm�1 confirms the presence of an
ester group ( ) and a strong band at 1,635 cm�1 corre-
sponds to the C55C stretching. The absorption peaks at
1,519.1 and 1,052 cm�1 can be assigned to N–H bending
and C–O stretching, respectively (Pan et al. ).
The observations from the FTIR study showed that these
adsorbents contain organic groups which favor adsorption
on the surface of the adsorbents.
Scanning electron microscopy
SEM micrographs of each material were taken to get a
clear view of the grains of the materials. Figures 2(a–c)
show scanning electron micrographs of CCA, MSA and
OPP, respectively. A close observation of the micrograph
of CCA (Figure 2(a)) revealed a structure which is porous
in nature. More specifically, it was found that these pores
are uniformly distributed throughout the material. The diam-
eter of these pores was found to be in the range of 1.5–4 μm.
From Figure 2(b), an idea about the morphology of MSA
was assessed and it was found to have some grains with
sizes in the range 0.7–4.5 μm. On the other hand, OPP
(Figure 2(c)) consists of pellet-like particles distributed uni-
formly throughout. The particle size for the OPP is in the
range of 15–35 μm.
Among these three adsorbents, CCA was found to have
a porous character and was expected to perform better than
the other two adsorbents.
Effect of adsorbent dose
The dependence of Ni(II) adsorption on these three adsor-
bents was studied at room temperature and fixed pH
values by varying the adsorbent amount from 10 to 30 g/L
keeping the adsorbate volume at 50 mL and the Ni(II) con-
centration at 500 mg/L. The results are shown in Figure 3.
The percentage removal of Ni(II) increases rapidly with
the increase in the amount of the adsorbents used in this
study, which may be due to the greater availability of the
exchangeable sites at higher amounts of the adsorbents.
However, the amount of Ni(II) adsorbed per gram of the
adsorbent was decreased from 18.93 to 13.02 mg/g (for
MSA), from 11.69 to 8.19 mg/g (for OPP) and from 44.2
to 16.39 mg/g (for CCA), with increasing adsorbent
amount from 10–30 g/L. This decrease in adsorption
capacity with increase in the adsorbent dose is mainly
because of unsaturation of adsorption sites through the
adsorption process (Kovacevic et al. ).
Effect of pH
Metal adsorption from aqueous solutions is critically related
to pH. It has also been reported that biosorption capacities
Figure 1 | (a)–(c) FTIR spectra of biomass, CCA, MSA and OPP, respectively.
243 H. Singh & V. K. Rattan | Adsorption of nickel from aqueous solutions Water Quality Research Journal of Canada | 46.3 | 2011
for heavy metals are strongly pH sensitive and that adsorp-
tion increases as solution pH increases (Zhang et al. ;
Yu et al. ).
To find out the effect of solution pH for the removal effi-
ciency of three different adsorbents, viz. CCA, MSA and
OPP, experiments were conducted with metal ion solutions
Figure 2 | (a)–(c) Scanning electron micrograph of biomass, CCA, MSA and OPP, respectively.
244 H. Singh & V. K. Rattan | Adsorption of nickel from aqueous solutions Water Quality Research Journal of Canada | 46.3 | 2011
having different pH values. pH of the solution was varied
from 1 to 10, keeping all other variables constant, i.e. temp-
erature (25± 1 WC), 24 h equilibration time, 500 mg/L Ni(II)
ion concentration and aqueous to adsorbent ratio 50:1 (mL/g).
The effect of pH is shown in Figure 4 in terms of the
amount of Ni(II) ions adsorbed per gram (Qe) of the adsor-
bent, respectively, onto the three different adsorbents
Figure 3 | Effect of adsorbent dose on the percentage adsorption of Ni(II) (pH¼ 7.0,
equilibration time¼ 24 h, temperature¼ 25± 1W
C, adsorbate concentration¼500 mg/L) for the three adsorbents used.
mentioned above. Initial investigation of adsorption capa-
bility (Figure 4) showed that all the adsorbents possessed
maximum sorption capacity for the cationic metal ion at
or around pH 6. This may be due to the fact that, at these
pH values, there was a net negative charge on the surface
components of the adsorbents and the ionic state of ligands
such as carboxyl, hydroxyl and amino groups will be such as
to promote a reaction with metal cations. Overall surface
charge on the surface of the adsorbents became positive at
lower pH and the presence of Hþ ions hinders the access
Figure 4 | Influence of pH on amount of Ni(II) adsorbed per unit weight (Qe) for three
different adsorbents (adsorbent dose¼ 1 g, metal ion concentration¼500 mg/L, equilibration time¼ 24 h, temperature¼ 25± 1
W
C).
Figure 5 | Influence of initial Ni(II) concentration (Co) on amount of Ni(II) ions adsorbed
per unit weight (Qe) of the adsorbents (pH¼ 7.0, equilibration time¼ 24 h,
temperature¼ 25± 1W
C, adsorbent dose¼ 0.5 g) for the three adsorbents
used.
245 H. Singh & V. K. Rattan | Adsorption of nickel from aqueous solutions Water Quality Research Journal of Canada | 46.3 | 2011
of metal ions by repulsive forces to the surface functional
groups, which resulted in a decrease of the percentage of
metal adsorption (Low et al. ). Therefore uptake of
Figure 6 | (a)–(c) Adsorption equilibrium isotherms for Ni(II) adsorption (pH¼ 7.0, equilibration
adsorbent doses.
nickel was less below pH 3, possibly due to the cation com-
petition effects with the oxonium (hydronium) ion H3Oþ.
When the pH of the solution was further increased, soluble
hydroxyl species were formed and precipitation of nickel
would occur. It is known that at pH 7.7, biosorption of cat-
ionic metal decreased, probably because of chemical
precipitation. According to the solubility products of metal
hydroxide as follows: Ksp(Ni(OH)2)¼ 10–14, solubility
studies were meaningless above pH 7.7 due to the formation
of insoluble products in the investigated solution (Sing &
Yu ).
Effect of initial metal ion concentration
The amount of Ni(II) adsorbed per gram of the adsorbent
(Qe) for the three chosen adsorbents was observed at differ-
ent metal ion concentrations (50–500 mg/L). Observation
showed that Qe for all three adsorbents increased with an
time¼ 24 h, temperature¼ 25± 1W
C) with MSA, OPP and CCA, respectively, at different
Figure 7 | (a)–(c) Langmuir isotherm for MSA, OPP and CCA, respectively, at different
adsorbent doses (pH¼ 7.0, equilibration time¼ 24 h, temperature¼ 25± 1W
C).
Figure 8 | (a)–(c) Freundlich isotherm for MSA, OPP and CCA, respectively, at different
adsorbent doses (pH¼ 7.0, equilibration time¼ 24 h, temperature¼ 25± 1W
C).
246 H. Singh & V. K. Rattan | Adsorption of nickel from aqueous solutions Water Quality Research Journal of Canada | 46.3 | 2011
increase in initial metal ion concentration (Figure 5), i.e.
from 3.67–18.93, 2.9–11.69 and 4.59–44.2 mg/g for MSA,
OPP and CCA, respectively, at adsorbent concentration of
10 g/L. An increase in the initial concentration of metal
ions contributes to the driving force to overcome mass trans-
fer resistance of ions between the adsorbent and bulk fluid
phases, thus increasing the uptake of metal ions. Moreover,
Table 1 | Values of different constants for Langmuir isotherms at various adsorbent doses. Q
represents the dimensionless separation factor relating to the Langmuir adsorption is
↓Parameter/ CCA OPPadsorbent dose in 50 mL→ 0.5 (g) 1.0 (g) 1.5 (g) 0.5 (g)
R 0.9954 0.9234 0.9545 0.99
SD 0.0061 0.0362 0.0253 0.00
Q 107.4 44.46 27.25 14.01
B 0.01063 0.04214 0.09862 0.01
RL 0.1584 0.04531 0.01988 0.13
an increase of the concentration of metal ions increases the
number of collisions between metal ions and adsorbent,
which results in enhancement of the adsorption process
(Krishnaiah et al. ).
Adsorption isotherms
Heavy metal adsorption data are usually described, ana-
lyzed and modeled using an adsorption isotherm, which
relates the metal uptake per unit mass of the sorbent to
signifies the adsorption capacity (mg/g), B relates to energy of adsorption (L/mg) and RLotherm. SD is the standard deviation which represents variation in the values of a variable
MSA1.0 (g) 1.5 (g) 0.5 (g) 1.0 (g) 1.5 (g)
90 0.9849 0.9947 0.9958 0.9972 0.9898
38 0.0258 0.0209 0.0066 0.0105 0.0282
10.75 7.985 26.62 26.27 13.91
259 0.01475 0.01923 0.01238 0.00919 0.01891
70 0.1194 0.0942 0.1391 0.1787 0.0956
Table 2 | Values of different constants for Freundlich isotherms at various doses. The KF parameter is relative to adsorption capacity and n refers to the process intensity. SD is the stan-
dard deviation which represents variation in the values of a variable
↓Parameter/ CCA OPP MSAadsorbent dose in 50 mL→ 0.5 (g) 1.0 (g) 1.5 (g) 0.5 (g) 1.0 (g) 1.5 (g) 0.5 (g) 1.0 (g) 1.5 (g)
R 0.9966 0.9956 0.9686 0.9734 0.9993 0.9926 0.9578 0.9997 0.9969
SD 0.0273 0.0315 0.0618 0.0457 0.0097 0.0314 0.0703 0.0080 0.0253
KF 1.320 1.288 2.177 0.8943 0.3847 0.4324 1.3564 0.3701 0.03601
n 1.139 1.031 1.119 2.236 1.6790 1.903 2.034 1.283 1.341
247 H. Singh & V. K. Rattan | Adsorption of nickel from aqueous solutions Water Quality Research Journal of Canada | 46.3 | 2011
the equilibrium metal concentration of the bulk phase
(Figures 6(a–c)).
Adsorption study data was also fitted to the Langmuir
(Figures 7(a–c)) and Freundlich (Figures 8(a–c)) isotherms
and values of various parameters were calculated. Table 1
gives the comparison of monolayer adsorption capacity
(Q) and energy of adsorption (b) and Table 2 gives the
Table 3 | Langmuir adsorption capacity for different low cost adsorbents
S. no. Low cost adsorbent name
1 Acid-treated basic lignin from pulp and paper industry’s black
2 Untreated Chlorella vulgaris
3 Acid-pretreated C. vulgaris
4 Calcium alginateþC. lutelaTEM05
5 Natural neem sawdust
6 Acid-treated neem sawdust
7 Free cell of Pseudomonas fluorescens 4F39
8 Immobilized cell of Ps. fluorescens 4F39
9 Biobeads of cell of Ps. fluorescens 4F39
10 Red mud
11 Activated almond husk (MAC-I)
12 Sufuric-acid-activated almond husk (MAC-II)
13 Dried activated sludge
14 Bagasse fly ash
15 Free biomass of Chlorella sorokiniana (FBCS)
16 Loofa sponge-immobilized bimass of C. sorokiniana (LIBCS)
17 Coir pith
18 Modified coir pith
19 Husk of Lathyrus sativus (HLS)
20 Rice bran
21 Rubber wood ash
22 Tea factory waste
comparison of adsorption capacity (KF) and adsorption
intensity (n). Data fitted well to both isotherms as indicated
by the R value which is well above 0.9. But for different
materials and at different doses the suitability of these iso-
therms is different, as shown in Tables 1 and 2 for the
Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms, respectively. It was
also found that values of RL were having values between
Maximum Langmuir adsorptioncapacity (Q in mg/g) Reference
liquor 5.28 Pérez et al. ()
264.74 Gaur et al. ()
437.90
115.99 Ozdemir et al. ()
31.50 Krishnaiah et al. ()
74.10
145.00 Marqués et al. ()
37.00
7.60
13.69 Hannachi et al. ()
30.77 Hasar ()
37.17
238.10 Aksu et al. ()
6.19 Mall et al. ()
45.87 Akhtar et al. ()
59.58
15.95 Sudersanan et al. ()
38.90 Thiravetyan et al. ()
15.70 Guha et al. ()
44.90 Zafar et al. ()
3.10 Gupta et al. ()
15.26 Malkoc & Nuhoglu ()
248 H. Singh & V. K. Rattan | Adsorption of nickel from aqueous solutions Water Quality Research Journal of Canada | 46.3 | 2011
0 and 1, which indicates that the adsorption process for
these adsorbents was favorable. The Langmuir adsorption
capacity (Q) of the three biowastes was compared with
other low cost adsorbents (Table 3) and found to be compar-
able with them.
CONCLUSIONS
In this study, sorption of Ni(II) ions on three different bio-
sorbents, viz. CCA, MSA and OPP, has been investigated.
The following conclusions can be drawn:
1. Therewere certain organic groups present on the surface of
the adsorbents, such as, carboxylic, alcoholic, amides, etc,
whichare known tobe favorable for the adsorptionprocess.
2. Surface morphology and surface particle size of all the
adsorbents were different from each other, and CCA,
having a porous surface, performed better than the
other two.
3. pH of the metal ion solution has a significant effect on
adsorption and maximum adsorption was found to be
around pH 6.
4. The data obtained through this work suggests that all
the three adsorbents used in this study are effective
low cost biosorbents for the removal of Ni(II) ions in
aqueous solution. Although the concentration range
(50–500 mg/L) used in this study is much higher than
Ni would be in most effluents, high concentrations
helped in minimizing the error in the estimation of
nickel spectrophotometrically.
5. The sorption of metal ions was also dependent on the
amount of adsorbent and concentration of the metal ions.
6. The equilibrium adsorption data were correlated by the
Freundlich and Langmuir isotherm equations. The maxi-
mum sorption capacities of CCA, OPP and MSA used in
this study are 107.4, 14.0 and 26.6 mg/g, respectively, for
Ni(II) ions at optimum adsorbent dose.
7. A comparison of the data suggests that CCA is the best
biosorbent among the three adsorbents used for this
study.
8. The adsorption capacity (Q) for the three adsorbents used
in this study is comparable with other low cost adsor-
bents reported in the literature.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors are grateful to the University Grants
Commision (UGC), New Delhi, India for providing
financial help.
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First received 1 September 2009; accepted in revised form 28 June 2011