Teawaste as An Adsorbent for Heavy Metal Removal from Industrial Wastewaters

Abstract

Water used in industries creates a wastewater that has a potential hazard for our environment because of introducing various contaminants such as heavy metals into soil and water resources. In this study, removal of cadmium, lead and nickel from industrial wastewaters has been investigated by using teawaste as a natural adsorbent. The research is a bench scale experimental type and analyses have performed by using different amounts of adsorbent in solutions with 5 different concentrations of each metal and also in a mixed combination. Besides, the effect of various amounts of teawaste used in adsorption efficiency experiments has been investigated. Results indicate that the removal efficiency is highest for lead and is minimum for cadmium. About 94 and 100% lead removal were achieved by using 0.5 and 1.5g adsorbent for solutions having concentrations of 5 and 10 mg/L Pb. Whereas, 1.5g teawaste can treat nickel solution of 5 mg/L concentration with an efficiency of not more that 85.7%. For cadmium, the efficiency was only 77.2% in the same conditions. On the other hand, for mixtures of metals and by applying 0.5 g teawaste, we considered a 3.5% decrease in lead removal efficiency and a 13.2% decrease in nickel adsorption for a mixed solution of 5 mg/L.