Chemo-thermal Treatment of Tribulus tresstris to Enhance its Sequestering Potential for Adsorption of Some Heavy Metals from Aqueous Media: Kinetic and Thermodynamic Study

  • Muhammad Ashraf Shaheen Ashraf Shaheen 1Department of Chemistry, University of Sargodha

Abstract

The plant based renewable biosorbents have extensively been investigated for removing water pollutants. The present study describes the sequestering of metal ions by exploiting a low cost biomaterial derived from Tribulus tresstris as sorbent. The batch equilibrium studies have been carried out both with raw and chemically/thermally treated biomaterial as a function of pH, contact time, shaking speed and shaking time to decide the effectiveness of biosorbent. The sorbent was activated chemically by utilizing 0.1M HCl and 0.1M K2CO3. A close muffle furnace was used for thermal treatment of the sorbent. The adsorption capacity was enhanced to 25% by thermal treatment and 54% by chemical treatment because of increase in pore volume and surface area. The greatest sorption was found for particle size of 200 µm with a 0.5 g dosage at pH 6 for 20 min at shaking speed 100 rpm. The FT-IR and SEM study was performed to discover the adsorption capacity of various functional groups and their binding mechanism. The adsorption data demonstrates that Langmuir, Freundlich and Dubinin-Radushkevich isotherm models were very much fitted to describe the adsorption behavior.

Published
Dec 21, 2016
How to Cite
SHAHEEN, Muhammad Ashraf Shaheen Ashraf. Chemo-thermal Treatment of Tribulus tresstris to Enhance its Sequestering Potential for Adsorption of Some Heavy Metals from Aqueous Media: Kinetic and Thermodynamic Study. Pakistan Journal of Analytical & Environmental Chemistry, [S.l.], v. 17, n. 2, p. 124-133, dec. 2016. ISSN 2221-5255. Available at: <https://pjaec.pk/index.php/pjaec/article/view/262>. Date accessed: 04 dec. 2023. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.21743/pjaec.v17i2.262.