Effective removal of sulphates from aqueous solutions by modified orange peel

Abstract

More recently, it has been shown that sulphate (SO4) adsorption plays a role not only in mediating the effects of anthropogenic S emissions. It was found that SO4 adsorption and desorption is important in buffering soil systems against extreme climatic events. For these reasons, correct understanding of SO4 adsorption and desorption remains an important scope for geochemical research. Nowadays, several appropriate methods are available including cementation, chemical precipitation, membrane filtration, ion-exchange and and hydrogel. However, they often require a great investment, and generate large amounts of waste products. However, the adsorption methods are cheap methods, used on large scale. Technical and economic concerns have led to a focus on lost-cost adsorbents. Adsorption is commonly used and are very successful, environmentally friendly and acceptable economically in low concentrations contaminants.

The adsorption of sulphates from water solution using orange peel was studied by means of batch mechanism. This study addresses the important parameters of SO4 with the aim of identifying optimal adsorption conditions. Many adsorption studies are available in the literature, which however focus on synthetic solutions. The aim of this study was to determine the dependency of sorption process on pH of the solution, the initial concentration of the sorbent, contact time and temperature. The Langmuir, Freundlich and Temkin isothermal models were used to describe the sorption isotherms of ions. They Langmuir model is more suitable for describing data than that of Freundlich. The adsorption efficiency of removing sulphates (q30 = 5 mg/g) by using orange peel was approximately 90%. When studying the kinetics it was discovered that the sorption process will follow the pseudo-second order. The thermodynamic parameters show exothermic character of sorption, and the processes will be spontaneous and favourable. The results indicate that it is possible to use orange peel effectively for removing sulphates and selected metals from waste water.