A Comparative Experimental Study of the Removal of Heavy Metals Using Low Cost Natural Adsorbents and Commerical Activated Carbon

Using activated carbon is one of the most common methods for removing heavy metals from water and wastewaters. In spite of its large scale used, commerical activated carbon still remains an expensive material. Hence, the need of low cost materials for the treatment of wastewaters has motivated research on investigation the various agro-based natural adsorbent. The objective of this study is to study the capability of two less expensive natural adsorbents for removal of heavy metals namely Zinc and Nickel from industrial wastewater. Natural adsorbents produced from locally agriculture by-product i.e., walnut shell and grain rice. Some important physico-chemical key parameters such as pH, mixing time and mass of the adsorbents have been investigated and their optimum values have been determined. The capabilities of produced natural adsorbents have been compared to commerically available activated carbon. The coefficients of Freundlich and Langmuir isotherms have been determined using fitting the obtained experimental data on the isotherms models. The obtained results indicate the natural adsorbent of grain rice showed better performance in removing Zinc and Nickel than other used activated carbons.