
EVALUATION OF BIOCHAR ON ADSORPTION KINETIC OF SOIL SOLUTION CONTAMINATED WITH HEAVY METALS
Author:
Musa V. H., Dawaki M.U.
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
Environmental contamination by heavy metals has become a world-wide problem. This is due to the fact that heavy metals contrary to other pollutants are non-biodegradable. Heavy metals (Cu, Pb, Zn and Cd) adsorption potential of maize-cob derived biochar and its property for improving the quality of irrigation water, was evaluated in this study. Soil samples from vegetable gardens were randomly collected around Jaba, while water samples were obtained across the irrigation water source (Jakara river). Both soil and water samples were digested using a mixture of HF- HNO3-HCl and Aqua rijia respectively in order to determine the heavy metal content by AAS. Equilibrium and kinetic experiments were carried out to ascertain the effects of parameters such as initial concentration, dosage of adsorbent and shaking time on a batch adsorption system, as different doses of maize-cob derived biochar (0.2g, 0.4g and 0.6g) were incubated with varying concentration of Cu, Pb, Zn (50mgL-1,100 mgL-1, and 200 mgL-1) and Cd (5 mgL-1, 10 mgL-1 and 20 mgL-1) for 3 days. Concentrations of metals were determined after shaking time of 2 hours, 4 hours and 6 hours using AAS. The adsorption data related well with the Freundlich isotherm model having correlation coefficient of R2 > 0.96 for Cu and Pb, and R2 > 0.76 for Zn whereas the adsorption kinetics corresponds with the pseudo-second-order model as adjudged by the high R2 and low SE values recorded. This study shows that biochar derived from maize-cob is a promising and inexpensive adsorbent that can be used for metal ion removal from aqueous solutions in soil and improvement of irrigation water quality.
Pages | 35-41 |
Year | 2024 |
Issue | 1 |
Volume | 4 |