Abstract
Industrial activities release heavy metal ions into water bodies, posing environmental and health hazards. Industries such as mining, metal plating, leather tanning, and battery manufacturing discharge effluents with high levels of toxic metals. Increased industrialization, resource exploitation, and droughts have exacerbated the presence of metals like cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), mercury (Hg), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb), and zinc (Zn) in drinking water, causing severe health issues.
This study focuses on removing heavy metals from wastewater using pine sawdust (P. pinaster) as an adsorbent. Four divalent Cu, Cd, Pb, and Fe metal ions were selected for their prevalence in industrial wastewater. The sawdust was characterized using techniques like Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) with Energy Dispersive X-ray (SEM-EDX), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) to assess its potential as an adsorbent. Batch and column adsorption experiments were conducted to optimize parameters such as adsorbent dose, contact time, initial pH, metal concentration, and temperature.
Results showed that adsorption capacity varied with pH, initial metal concentration, and adsorbent dose. The Langmuir isotherm model best described the adsorption behavior, indicating maximum monolayer adsorption capacities of 34.15 mg/g for Cu2+, 64.00 mg/g for Cd2+, 48.76 mg/g for Pb2+, and 49.97 mg/g for Fe2+. The study...