In this project the adsorption ability of mesoporous magnesium carbonate (MMC) for copper (Cu), cobalt (Co), chromium (Cr) and arsenic (As) was evaluated. This was done by mixing MMC and dissolved metal (of different concentrations) and measuring the concentration of the solution before and after addition of MMC with Inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy. Besides MMC, “ordinary” magnesium carbonate (MgCO_3) was evaluated for comparison. Furthermore, the MMC was characterised with various instruments before and after adsorption of the metals. The adsorption experiments established that MMC was able to adsorb large amounts of Cu, Co and As while MgCO_3 was not. Moreover, it was discovered that both materials adsorbed equally large amounts of Cr. At higher concentrations of Cu and Co the uptake capacity of MMC suddenly dropped. However, for As, it was determined that MMC reached saturation at a concentration of ~22 mg/L. An adsorption experiment of a mixture of metals of 20 mg/L of each metal could not conclude anything about the selectivity of MMC, but the experiment revealed that MMC was able to adsorb all of Cu, Co and As rapidly at this concentration. The characterisation of MMC before adsorption revealed an amorphous structure and a high porosity. The structure of MMC after adsorption of Cu went from amorphous to crystalline and after adsorption of Co and As the structure also became crystalline, but of a lower degree than after adsorption of Cu. Furthermore, it was discovered that ion exchange also occurred along with adsorption.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-388827 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Löfgren, Rebecka |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Nanoteknologi och funktionella material |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | UPTEC K, 1650-8297 ; 19027 |
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