| Locally available sawdust, a byproduct of the wood industry, was found to be a low cost and promising adsorbent for the removal of copper (II) and lead (II) from wastewater. In this work, sorption of copper and lead on sawdust has been studied by using batch techniques. For both ions, the equilibrium sorption levels were determined to be a function of the solution pH, contact time, sorbent and sorbate concentration. The equilibrium adsorption capacities of sawdust for copper and lead were obtained by using linear Freundlich and Langmuir isotherms. Ion exchange is probably one of the major adsorption mechanisms for binding divalent metal ions to the maple sawdust. Metal ions which are bounded to the sawdust could be stripped by the addition of 0.1 M strong acid, regenerating the sawdust for reuse. Nonequilibrium experiments were done by using glass columns. The results provide strong evidence to support the hypothesis of adsorption mechanism. And, it also supplies significant sawdust operation capacity data for engineering design. |
