Nickel contaminated wastewater from plating industries is a major environmental concern. Current treatment methods are often expensive and can also create additional problems. Biosorption is an alternative treatment method that uses inexpensive biomaterials to sequester metals from aqueous solutions. In this study, acid washed barley straw (AWBS) was used for adsorbing nickel ions (Ni2+) from simulated nickel plating wastewater. The adsorption process was rapid and the equilibrium was reached in about an hour. An increase in the initial nickel concentration increased the equilibrium nickel uptake, and the maximum uptake was found to be 8.45 mg/g of AWBS when the initial nickel concentration was1000 mg/L at pH 5. Nickel adsorption was favorable at room temperature than 5oC and 40oC, better adsorption rate and equilibrium uptake was observed at 23oC. Increasing the pH from 3 to 7 increased the equilibrium nickel uptake and the maximum uptake was observed at pH 7, whilst the initial nickel ion concentration was 100 mg/L. The Freundlich isotherm model exhibited better fit with the equilibrium data than the Langmuir equation. Nickel was desorbed using hydrochloric acid solution at pH 2 and the desorption efficiency was 86%. FT-IR studies indicated the participation of hydroxyl, carboxyl and amide groups from cellulose, hemi-cellulose, protein and lignin of barley straw.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:SSU.etd-09222009-001314 |
| Date | 22 September 2009 |
| Creators | Thevannan, Ayyasamy |
| Contributors | Wilson, Lee D., Niu, Hui (Catherine), Nemati, Mehdi, Hill, Gordon |
| Publisher | University of Saskatchewan |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-09222009-001314/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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