Modification of Rubber-Seed Shell Activated Carbon using Chitosan for Removal of Cu~(2+) and Pb~(2+) from Aqueous Solution

摘要

The needs to treat wastewater from plants and factories before releasing it to the environment is crucial to remove unwanted pollutants such as high concentration of heavy metals which may affect the environment. Adsorption via activated carbon (AC) has shown good traits in removing heavy metals in aqueous solution. In this research, rubber-seed shell (RSS), which is low cost and available abundantly, was tested as a precursor to produce porous carbons in a chemical scheme using chitosan. From synthesis parameters studied, AC with the largest surface area (530.73 m~2/g), pore volume (0.2977 cm~2/g) and pore diameter (2.243 nm), which majority consist of mesopores was obtained when RSS is impregnated with ratio of 1:2 and treated with activation temperature of 700°C for a period of 120 minutes. The results from adsorption test showed that under the effect of low concentration of lOOppm, sample C3 can remove 74.16% of Cu~(2+) and 76.15% of Pb~(2+). Under the influence of temperature of 25°C, highest 71.4% of Cu~(2+) and 72.93% of Pb~(2+) removal was observed while time taken to achieve equilibrium are 105 and 75 minutes, respectively. Based on the analysis, it inferred that the adsorption of Pb~(2+) fits the pseudo-first order (R = 0.9751) with root mean error of 1.006% while adsorption of Cu~(2+) fits the pseudo-second order (R = 0.9776) with root mean of 1.178%. The obtained results show that agriculture waste product from RSS can be effectively used as an adsorption material.