Chromium biosorption by Erythrina variegata orientalis leaf powder

ENVR 256

Paladugu Venkateswarlu, pvlu9@rediffmail.com, Nalluri Chitti Babu, nallurichitti@rediffmail.com, and G. V. S. Aditya. Department of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering, Andhra University, Peda Waltair, Visakhapatnam, 530 003, India
The removal of heavy metals from contaminated industrial wastewaters using various adsorbents represents an eco-friendly purification method. The removal of chromium (VI) from aqueous solutions onto Erythrina variegata orientalis leaf powder is carried out extensively in batch operations. The maximum removal of 95.7% is achieved at pH=3 for the equilibrium agitation time of 180 min. The biosorption of Cr (VI) increases with an increase in adsorbent dosage from 10 g/L to 50 g/L and decrease in adsorbent size from 150 µm to 45 µm. The biosorption is decreased from 99.1(0.446 mg/g) to 53.3% (1.917 mg/g) with an increase in chromium initial concentration (C0) from 22.5 to 180 mg/L. The chromium removal is decreased from 1.754 to 1.267 mg/g with an increase in volume of aqueous solution from 25 to 200 ml. The biosorption is decreased from 1.767 to 1.414 mg/g with an increase in temperature from 283 to 333 K. Langmuir and Redlich-Peterson isotherm models represent the data very well compared to the Freundlich isotherm model. The biosorption data follows second-order kinetics with a rate constant of 0.104 g/mg-min for 60 g/L of 45 µm adsorbent size. The negative value of ΔH reflects the exothermic nature and the negative value of ΔS shows a reversible process. The process is tending towards irreversibility as ΔS is a approaching positive value with an increase in C0. The change in ΔG from negative to positive indicates the feasibility of biosorption at lower temperatures. 50 g/L of 45 µm size adsorbent removes 94.7% (1.705 mg/g) of chromium from 50 ml of (C0 = 90 mg/L) aqueous solution.