Thermal activated Casuarina equisetifolia wood bark for heavy metal adsorption

Abstract

The thermal activation has been used with better results for increase the adsorption capacity of some materials and the thermally modified wood might be a better adsorbent than untreated wood. Wooden materials or wastes are cheap sorbent materials. The useful of application of wooden by-products or wastes for wastewater treatment are determined by their high removal selectivity, good adsorption capacity and possibility of regeneration. In order to, present studies suggest this hypothesis for several criteria. The powdered Casuarina equisetifolia wood bark heat treated at 2, 6 and 8 hours were obtained and the maximum adsorption was evaluated in pH 5 and pH 8 for the unheated and heated series respectively. In spite of that, all heat treated wood samples showed a significant higher adsorption capacity than compared to unheated wood for cadmium and chromium adsorptions. Although this reported that the Langmuir model gave a better fit than the Freundlich model, whereas adsorption capacity is optimum in Cr (III) ion in pH 5 and the maximum monolayer adsorption capacity reported for Cd (II) ion in pH 5. This can be a better benefit of heat treated wood in the end of its life.