Study on Adsorption of Mercury from Aqueous Solution on Activated Carbons Prepared from Palm Kernel Shell

摘要

The adsorption ability of powdered activated carbons (PAC) derived from palm kernel shell (PKS) was investigated. PAC was prepared by chemical activation method using ZnCl_2 as an activating agents. The adsorption studies of Hg(II) was carried out under control condition with constant pH, solution temperature (30 °C), treatment time (90 min) and absorbent dosage (2.0 gL~(-1)). It was revealed that PAC efficiently removed as much as 10 mg L~(-1) of Hg(II) with the percentage of removal up to 97.7 %. Both Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption isotherms were used to explain the adsorption behavior. Freundlich model was found to be fitted well and favored multilayer adsorption. The kinetics data were fitted with pseudo-first order and pseudo-second order, and it was found to obeys the pseudo-second order kinetic order. Recent finding suggest that PKS has the potential to be a promising precursor for the production of activated carbon with the excellent adsorption capacity to remove Hg(II) from aqueous solution.