Author : Yasser I. Abdulaziz , and Aya A. Esmail

This research deals with performing a comparative study between prepared and commercial activated carbon to evaluate their performance for removing Pb(II) ions from aqueous solution . The first part of experimental work involves preparing activated carbon from bark of date palm trees(as a novel precursor) using phosphoric acid with concentration of 85% at specific condition of carbonization temperature at 500oC and 45 min as a holding time. The obtained material was submitted to measurements of active surface area and scanning electron microscope. The second part includes the batch adsorption studies to remove Pb(II) ions from aqueous solution by the two different types of activated carbon. The effect of different parameters such as pH of solution, contact time, initial ions concentration, and mass of adsorbent on the removal amount of lead were fully studied. The experimental data shows that the best removal efficiency was obtained at 240min of adsorbing time with initial metal concentration of 50ppm, 6 pH solution, and 15 g/L mass of adsorbent, for both prepared and commercial activated carbon. Langmuir and Freundlich models were applied on the achieved data and it was observed that the Freundlich equation was more fitted to our data.

Keywords: Activated carbon; The bark of date palm tree; Lead adsorption; Freundlich isotherm; Langmuir isotherm.

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.6, No.4 (Aug-2016)