AJAYKUMAR KONGA, K.S. ARUNSANJAY, T. HARIHARAPRABHU, P. SUDHAGAR AND T.R. SOLAMAN
Abstract
Heavy metals like chromium, copper, lead, zinc, mercury, cadmium etc. are present in wastewater from several industries such as metal cleaning and plating baths, refineries, paper and pulp, tanning, dyes and pigments etc. in which copper is present in a range from 50 to 500 mg/L which leave into environment. Rice husk has been used for the removal of copper ion from synthetic aqueous solution. In batch experiments, the influences of contact time, pH, adsorbent dose and initial copper concentration were analysed using adsorption process performance and adsorption isotherm for the equilibrium. The results showed that adsorption of copper by rice husk reached to equilibrium after 240 min and later a little change of copper removal efficiency was observed. Higher copper adsorption (12.77 mg/g) was observed at pH 2.5 and adsorbent dosage of 4g. The rice husk shows very good promise for practical applicability and can be an alternative biosorbent for the removal of Cu (II) from aqueous solution.