African Journal of
Biotechnology

  • Abbreviation: Afr. J. Biotechnol.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 1684-5315
  • DOI: 10.5897/AJB
  • Start Year: 2002
  • Published Articles: 12488

Full Length Research Paper

Evaluation of the activated carbon prepared from the algae Gracilaria for the biosorption of Cu(II) from aqueous solutions

Akbar Esmaeili1*, Samira Ghasemi2 and Abdolhossein Rustaiyan3
  1Department of Chemical Engineering, North Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, P.O. Box 19585-936, Tehran, Iran. 2Department of Marin Science and Technology, Islamic Azad University, North Tehran Branch, Tehran, Iran. 3Department of Chemistry, Science and Research Campus, Islamic Azad, University, P.O. Box 14515-775, Tehran, Iran.
Email: [email protected]

  •  Accepted: 17 April 2008
  •  Published: 17 June 2008

Abstract

 

The batch removal of copper (II) ions from aqueous solution and wastewater using the activated carbon prepared from Gracilaria by acid decomposition was investigated. The effect of pH, biosorption time, adsorbent dose, and metal ions concentration, were considered. The most effective pH was found to be 4.0. The biosorption capacities were solution pH dependent and the maximum uptake for copper with initial concentration 70, 100 and 150 mg l-1 at pH 4.0 were obtained 95.53, 93.72 and 88.84%, respectively. The total metal ions biosorption occurs within 2 h. The equilibrium adsorption data fitted to Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models. Both the models represent the experimental data satisfactorily. The adsorption follows second order kinetic. This study shows the benefit of using activated carbon from marine red algae as a low cost sorbent for the removal of copper from aqueous solution wastewater.

 

Key words: Biosorption, copper, Gracilaria, wastewater, activated carbon, isotherm model.

Abbreviation

 

 

 

Copyright © 2024 Author(s) retain the copyright of this article.

This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0

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