Equilibrium and Kinetic Studies of Adsorption of Lead using Low Cost Adsorbents

Background: Anthropogenic activities are major source of water pollution, particularly, because of haphazard dumping of heavy metals which get accumulated through trophic levels posing a severe risk to the surroundings. The removal of heavy metals from wastewater is, thus, very significant. Objective: The objective of the present study is to use rice husk, tea waste and orange peel for removal of Pb (II) ions by adsorption and to develop equilibrium and kinetic studies data for the same. Method: The batch process of adsorption was used and the concentration of lead adsorbed was measured titrimetrically. Findings: The maximum removal efficiency has been observed as 88% in tea waste and 80% in rice husk and orange peel. The equilibrium data obtained at optimized conditions for all the metal ions studied has been subjected to the isotherm models used for adsorption, namely, Langmuir and Freundlich. Further, to examine the kinetics for adsorption of Pb (II) ions on the adsorbents under study, pseudo first order and second order equations have been analysed. Thus, it was concluded that the utilization of low cost waste materials for treating wastewater using adsorption is effective, ecofriendly, locally available causing no pollution along with solving the problem of waste disposal.