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Journal of Taibah University for Science 10 (2016) 700708

Water purification using different waste fruit cortexes for the

removal of heavy metals
Khairia M. Al-Qahtani
Department of Chemistry, Princess Nora bint Abdel-Rahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Received 8 June 2015; received in revised form 24 August 2015; accepted 5 September 2015
Available online 10 November 2015

Abstract
The use of different cortex fruit wastes, including banana, kiwi and tangerine peels, for removing toxic and heavy element Cd+2 ,
Cr+3 and Zn+2 ions from aqueous solutions has been previously investigated. The ground material was powdered in a mortar and
passed through a screen to obtain two different particle sizes, 1 and 2 mm, for all of the powders. In preliminary experiments using
kiwi cortex, material with a 1-mm particle size showed a higher retention capability (up to 1016% of Cd+2 , Zn+2 and Cr+3 ) than
material with 2-mm particles. Considering these results, material with a 1-mm particle size was used in further experiments with the
other waste materials. For Cd+2 , Zn+2 and Cr+3 removal, it was determined that kiwi and tangerine cortex showed better biosorption
capability when compared with banana cortex (up to 35% more for Cd, 25% more for Zn and 35% more for Cr). The effects
of the initial concentration (10100 mg/l), pH (210), adsorbent dosage (0.12.0 g) and contact time (5120 min) were studied at
room temperature. A strong dependence of the adsorption capacity on the initial metal concentration was observed. The capacity
increased as the initial concentrations decreased. A maximum removal was observed at an adsorbent dosage of 2.0 g and an initial
concentration of 10 mg/l. The adsorption isotherms of the different cortex fruit wastes were determined. The equilibrium data were
tested using a Langmuir isotherm model, and the kinetics conformed to the pseudo-second equation. The order of the maximum
adsorption capacity of these metal ions on banana was Cr+3 < Cd+2 < Zn+2 , whereas it was Cd+2 < Cr+3 < Zn+2 for kiwi and tangerine.
Complexation is proposed as the adsorption mechanism. The experimental results show that the natural biosorbent was effective
for the removal of pollutants from an aqueous solution.
2015 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Taibah University. This is an open access article under
the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Keywords: Biosorption; Heavy metals; Wastewater; Polluted water

1. Introduction

Heavy metal pollution in aquatic systems has become

a serious threat and has a great potential to cause
Tel.: +966 505605693.
environmental-derived cancer because these metals are
E-mail address: dr adalah@yahoo.com
Peer review under responsibility of Taibah University. non-biodegradable and therefore persistent. Metals are
mobilized and carried into the food web as a result of
leaching from waste dumps, polluted soils and water.
These metals increase in concentration at every level of
the food chain and are passed onto the next higher level in

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jtusci.2015.09.001
1658-3655 2015 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Taibah University. This is an open access article under the
CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
 K.M. Al-Qahtani / Journal of Taibah University for Science 10 (2016) 700708
a phenomenon called biomagnification [1]. The contam-
ination of water with substances that have an adverse
effect on human beings, animals and plants is called
water pollution. Water pollution is a worldwide prob-
lem, and its control has become increasingly important in
recent years [2]. Municipal or industrial effluents treated
by wastewater treatment plants contain large amounts of
organic matter and pollutants, including metals such as
Cu, Zn, Cd and Pb. The uptake of metals by sludge flocks
is of great significance in pollution control [3]. Lead is a
very toxic heavy metal, and its target organs are bones,
the brain, blood, kidneys, and the thyroid glands. The
presence of lead in discharge and its toxic nature cause
other adverse effects on receiving waters in the aquatic
system. Even a very low concentration of heavy metals in
water can be very toxic to aquatic life. The main source
of lead and cadmium in water is the effluents of process-
ing industries, i.e., electroplating, paint, pigment, basic
steel work, textile industries, metal finishing and electric
accumulators batteries [4].
Conventional methods for removing metals from
aqueous solutions include chemical precipitation, chem-
ical oxidation and reduction, ion exchange filtration,
electrochemical treatment, reverse osmosis, membrane
technologies and evaporation. The major disadvan-
tage of conventional treatment technologies is the
production of toxic chemical sludge, whose dis-
posal/treatment becomes a costly affair and is not
eco-friendly. Therefore, removal of toxic heavy met-
als to an environmentally safe level in a cost-effective
and environmentally friendly manner is of great impor-
tance [5,6]. In recent years, considerable attention has
been devoted to the study of the removal of heavy
metal ions from solution by adsorption using agricul-
tural materials. Natural materials that are available in
large quantities or certain wastes from agricultural oper-
ations may have the potential to be used as low-cost
adsorbents, and they represent unused resources, which
are widely available and are environmentally friendly.
Some investigations on the removal of heavy metal
ions with agricultural by-products have been previ-
ously reported [7]. Biosorption is defined as the ability
of biological materials to accommodate heavy metals
from wastewaters through the metabolically mediated
physico-chemical pathways of uptake. Algae, fungi, bac-
teria, parts of some higher plants and yeasts have proven
to be potential metal biosorbents. When the heavy metal
concentration exceeds the tolerance level, it will show
harmful effects on human physiological and other bio-
logical systems [8].
Several biosorption studies have been conducted
using microbial systems and mainly involve bacteria,
701
microalgae and fungi [9,10]. Nevertheless, the term is
now applied to all manners of organic and inorganic pol-
lutants, and the term biosorption can describe any system
in which a sorbate (i.e., an atom, molecule, a molecular
ion) interacts with a biosorbent (i.e., a solid surface of a
biological matrix) and results in an accumulation at the
sorbatebiosorbent interface and therefore a reduction of
sorbent concentration in the solution [11]. Many differ-
ent approaches have been studied and developed for the
effective removal of heavy metals using biosorbents such
as peat [12], fly ash [13,14], microbial biomass and other
agricultural by-products such as sugarcane bagasse [15],
soya bean hulls [16], walnut hulls [17], cotton seed hulls
and corn cobs [18]. It has also been observed that these
biosorbents require further modifications to increase the
number of active binding sites and make them readily
available for sorption. Huang and Huang have stated
that pre-treatment of the biomass removes the surface
impurities on the biosorbents and exposes the available
binding sites for metal sorption [19,20].
The main goal of this work was to demonstrate
the use of modified waste materials from banana, kiwi
and tangerine cortex as an excellent source of biomass
for the chelating of heavy metals such as Cr+3 , Cd+2
and Zn+2 . The effects of the adsorbent dose, pH, con-
tact time and initial metal ion concentration on the
adsorption capacity were investigated. The equilib-
rium of adsorption was modelled using the Langmuir
isotherm.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Reagents
All of the chemicals used in this study were of analyt-
ical purity. Stock solutions of single heavy metals were
prepared as follows: the stock solutions of cadmium,
chromium and zinc (1000 mg/l) were provided from the
BDH Company; the working standard solutions of metal
ions were prepared by diluting 100 ml of the stock stan-
dard solution of the selected ion to 1 l with distilled water
(or by diluting 50 ml of the stock standard solution of the
selected ion to a half litre with distilled water). A total
of 5 ml of this solution was diluted to 50 ml with dis-
tilled water to obtain a solution containing 10 mg/l of the
selected ion. These concentrations were used throughout
the experiments. The pH of the solution was adjusted
using 0.1 M HCl or 0.1 M NaOH for fresh dilutions. All
of the adsorption experiments were conducted at room
temperature.
702 K.M. Al-Qahtani / Journal of Taibah University for Science 10 (2016) 700708
2.2. Cellulose-derivate material
The different cortexes (banana, tangerine and kiwi)
were cleaned by avoiding any pulp and the carpellar
membrane. Then, the different materials were dried at
40 C inside a convection oven for 6 days. Once dried,
the cortexes were milled using a mortar and screened
to obtain two different particle sizes (1 and 2 mm). The
resulting powders were treated for alkalinization with
0.5 N NaOH for 20 min according to [21]. The powders
were then passed through gauze and rinsed with dis-
tilled water four times to eliminate the excess of NaOH.
Finally, the powders were dried again at 40 C. To esti-
mate the effect of the alkalinization procedure, control
materials were also produced in the same way with the
exception of the treatment with NaOH. Once dried, all
of the biosorbent powders were kept on a dryer until use.
2.3. Biosorption process
Adsorption experiments were conducted by measur-
ing 50 ml of the wastewater (preparation laboratory)
sample and poured into a 250-ml conical flask. A total
of 0.5 g of the adsorbent (banana, tangerine and kiwi)
was added to the wastewater. The conical flask contain-
ing the adsorbent and the wastewater was placed on a
rotary shaker and shaken at 158 rpm at room tempera-
ture (28 C) for a period of 60 min to ensure equilibrium.
The suspension was filtered, and inductively coupled
plasma (ICP) was used to analyse the concentration of
the different metal ions present in the filtrate.
The adsorption capacity qe (mg/g) after equilibrium
was calculated using the following equation:
(P0 Pe )
qe = V (1)
W the use of these materials are their availability (because
where P0 and Pe are the initial and final concentrations
of the heavy metals present in wastewater before and
after adsorption and for a period of time (mg/l), respec-
tively, Pe represents the concentrations of heavy metals
in wastewater (mg/l) when equilibrium was attained, and
the volume of wastewater used is represented by V (ml),
whereas W represents the mass (g) of the adsorbent used.
2.4. Inuence of particle size on the removal
efciency
To determine the influence of the particle size on the
removal efficiency, two different particle sizes (1 and
2 mm) were used for the kiwi cortex in the experiments
for the removal of cadmium, chromium and zinc in solu-
tion. The result of this assessment was used to decide the
Fig. 1. Removal of heavy metals from wastewater with two different
particle sizes (the grey bars 2 mm and the black bars 1 mm) of kiwi
cortex powder.
best conditions to be applied in the other cortexes. The
percent removal of heavy metals from the solution was
calculated using the following equation:
(P0 Pe )
% metal removal = 100 (2)
P0
where % metal removal is the ratio of the difference in
the metal concentration before and after adsorption.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Role of fruit cortex in the removal of heavy
metals
Different technologies have been used to eliminate
heavy metals in contaminated air, soil or water. One of
those is the use of agricultural wastes. The waste cortexes
of different fruits were determined as raw material with
a high potential to be used as support for the biosorp-
tion of heavy metals. Among the main advantages of
they can be obtained relatively easily), low cost and the
fact that neither culture nor synthesis is needed for their
production. In particular, fruit waste peels from different
potential products can be used. The use of citric peel (cor-
tex) from tangerine or other organic wastes, such as kiwi
and banana cortex, to remove heavy metals using their
chemical composition as cellulose and other polysaccha-
rides, can be applied for metal sorption in surface and
groundwater.
Interesting results were found for the different particle
sizes tested when using a Cd+2 , Cr+3 and Zn+2 solution
to test the capability of kiwi cortex for metal retention.
It was found that removal of material with a 1-mm par-
ticle size (16%, 11% and 10% of Cd+2 , Cr+3 and Zn+2 ,
respectively) was more than that of material with a 2-
mm particle size (Fig. 1), and considering these results,
 K.M. Al-Qahtani / Journal of Taibah University for Science 10 (2016) 700708
Fig. 2. Removal of heavy metals from elution samples from wastewa-
ter. With (the white bars tangerine, the grey bars banana and the black
bars kiwi) cortex powder of 1 mm size particle.
only the 1-mm particles were used in further experiments
with all of the different cortexes. The removal was cal-
culated using Eq. (2). Considering the particle size, it
was expected that the smaller particle size would result
in the highest biosorption effect because small particles
can expose more contact surface. The experimental data
agreed with the expected results, and the fruit cortex
with the smallest particle size (1 mm) resulted in better
metal removal than that with a 2-mm particle size. Metal
removal using (banana, tangerine and kiwi) cortex is
depicted in Fig. 2. In this case, the overall removal of Cr,
Cd and Zn with tangerine increased significantly (88%,
67% and 43%, respectively) compared with the results
for banana cortex (where the overall removal of Cr, Cd
and Zn was 42%, 33% and 19%, respectively). For the
kiwi cortex, the results were similar to those of tangerine
(up to 91%, 70% and 49% for Cr, Cd and Zn, respec-
tively). The cell walls of plants, as mentioned above, are
rich in polysaccharides, which are mainly cellulose and
pectin compounds as galacturonic acid polymers [22].
These pectin-like compounds can be ionized with an
alkaline treatment and can generate negative charges that
may bind metallic cations. The banana cortex contains
higher amounts of starch and cellulose [23] and more
pectin-type compounds [24] than tangerine or kiwi cor-
texes. This difference between banana and citric cortexes
does not result in a significant difference for biosorption
of Zn, but it is important for Cd and Cr and in agree-
ment with the data collected. The removals of Cd and
Cr were similar using tangerine or kiwi cortex and gen-
erated high values of biosorption (approximately 90%
and 70%, respectively), whereas banana cortex achieved
a lower removal value (only 40% and 30%). This result
can be explained by the composition of the banana cor-
tex, which is rich in starch and cellulose, and it has been
previously reported that these materials can bind Cr and
703
Table 1
Biosorption capacity of different fruit cortex powder.
Biosorbent/metal Cr (mg/g) Cd (mg/g) Zn (mg/g)
Kiwi 375 470 280
Tangerine 350 450 260
Banana 240 195 125
Cd better than other metals. The carboxyl and hydroxyl
groups on the pores surfaces will coordinate with metal
ions to form metal complexes [23].
The capacity of biosorption was calculated using
Eq. (1) for every cortex, and the results are shown in
Table 1. As shown, the kiwi cortex was capable of
adsorbing approximately 375 mg of Cr and 470 mg
of Cd per gram but only 280 mg of Zn per gram. For
tangerine and banana, the best retention rate was for Cd
(450 and 195 mg/g), followed by Cr (350 and 240 mg/g)
and finally Zn (260 and 125 mg/g).
Volesky and Holand, who worked with microbial
biomass and Cd, Cu and Pb, report (q) values in the
range of 11215 mg/g of biomass for Cd, 1.2152 mg/g
for Cu and 53600 mg/g for Pb [25]. In our case, the best
q values were obtained with kiwi cortex (470 mg/g and
375 mg/g for Cd and Cr, respectively) and 450 mg/g for
Cd and 350 mg/g for Cr using the tangerine cortex.
We determined that the order of maximum adsorp-
tion capacity of these metal ions for banana was
Cr+3 < Cd+2 < Zn+2 and Cd+2 < Cr+3 < Zn+2 for kiwi and
tangerine.
3.2. Relationship between heavy metal removal and
wastewater pH
The metal ion adsorption is affected by the pH value
of the solution, thereby changing the surface charge of
the adsorbent and metal speciation. The heavy metal
concentration and pH were examined during the experi-
ment. During the experiment, the pH varied from acid to
alkaline (210), which revealed that the mechanism of
metal removal was possibly mainly due to metal immo-
bilization in the rhizosphere and absorption through the
roots and partially by precipitation. Similar findings were
reported by Barakat [26], who described the removal
of metals through chemical precipitation under alka-
line conditions (pH 911). The higher metal removal
occurred at pH 6.0 for Cd, Cr and Zn, as shown in
Figs. 35. The metal removal of Cd+2 , Cr+3 and Zn+2 ions
from kiwi, banana and tangerine was increased as the pH
increased from 2 to 6, and after that, the metal removal
decreased from pH 6 to 10. This happened because of
the effect on the adsorption sites and solubility product
704 K.M. Al-Qahtani / Journal of Taibah University for Science 10 (2016) 700708

Fig. 3. Effect of initial pH on removal percentage of Cd+2 , Cr+3 and

Zn+2 ions onto banana cortex. Fig. 6. Effect of contact time on removal percentage of Cd+2 ion onto
(the black bars banana, the grey bars tangerine and the white bars kiwi)
100 cortex powder.
90 Cd
80
Cr
% Metal Removal

70
Zn
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
pH value

Fig. 4. Effect of initial pH on removal percentage of Cd+2 , Cr+3 and

Zn+2 ions onto kiwi cortex.

100
90 Cd Fig. 7. Effect of contact time on removal percentage of Cr+3 ion onto
80 (the black bars banana, the grey bars tangerine and the white bars kiwi)
Cr
% Metal Removal

70 cortex powder.
Zn
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
pH value

Fig. 5. Effect of initial pH on removal percentage of Cd+2 , Cr+3 and

Zn+2 ions onto tangerine cortex.

and occurred for every metal ion. pH 6.0 was chosen as

the adsorption condition for the following experiments.
Fig. 8. Effect of contact time on removal percentage of Zn+2 ion onto
3.3. Adsorption kinetics (the black bars banana, the grey bars tangerine and the white bars kiwi)
cortex powder.

The adsorption kinetics were investigated to obtain

a better understanding of the dynamics of heavy metal process proceeds rapidly and that adsorption can be
ions on fruit cortex. Figs. 68 show the effect of time attained within 60 min.
on the absorption capacity of the three metal ions on The kinetics data were modelled using a pseudo-
the fruit cortex. It can be observed that the adsorption second-order model, which assumes that the rate is
 K.M. Al-Qahtani / Journal of Taibah University for Science 10 (2016) 700708 705

2 2
1.8 1.8
1.6 Cd 1.6 Cd
1.4 Cr 1.4 Cr
1.2 1.2
1 Zn 1 Zn
t/qt

t/qt
0.8 0.8
0.6 0.6
0.4 0.4
0.2 0.2
0 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140

t ( min) t ( min)
Fig. 9. Pseudo second-order kinetics plots of adsorption kinetics of Fig. 11. Pseudo second-order kinetics plots of adsorption kinetics of
metal ions on banana cortex. metal ions on kiwi cortex.

2 60
1.8 55 Cd
1.6 Cd 50
Cr
45
1.4 Cr 40 Zn
1.2 35
%Metal Removal

1 Zn
30
t/qt

0.8 25
0.6 20
15
0.4
10
0.2
5
0 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 0 20 40 60 80 100 120
t ( min) Metal cncentraon (ppm)

Fig. 10. Pseudo second-order kinetics plots of adsorption kinetics of Fig. 12. Effect of initial concentration on removal percentage of Cd+2 ,
metal ions on tangerine cortex. Cr+3 and Zn+2 ions onto banana cortex.

120
proportional to the square of the number of remaining
free surface sites. This model can be written as [27]: 100

t 1 t Cd
% Metal Removal

= + (3) 80
Cr
qt k2 qe2 qe
Zn
60
where k2 (g/(mg min)) is the pseudo-second-order rate
constant. The relationship between t/qt and t is lin- 40
ear with a slope of 1/qe and an intercept of 1/(k2 qe2 ).
20
Figs. 911 show the application of the pseudo-second-
order model for the experimental data in Figs. 911. 0
The adsorption process was well described by the 0 20 40 60 80 100 120
pseudo-second-order equation, indicating that the pro- Metal concentraon (ppm)
cess mechanism was chemical adsorption [28].
Fig. 13. Effect of initial concentration on removal percentage of Cd+2 ,
Cr+3 and Zn+2 ions onto kiwi cortex.
3.4. Inuence of the heavy metal concentration in
the wastewater upon removal of heavy metals conical flasks were shaken for 60 min at 158 rpm. The
effect of the metal ion concentration on the removal of
The effect of metal concentration was studied by Cd+2 , Cr+3 and Zn+2 ions by banana, kiwi and tangerine
adding 0.5 g of fruit cortex powder to 25 ml aliquots of decreases with an increase in the initial concentration of
Cd+2 , Cr+3 and Zn+2 with concentrations of 5, 10, 15, 25, the metal ions. This indicates that adsorption is highly
50 and 100 ppm at pH 6.0, as shown in Figs. 1214. The dependent on the initial concentration of the metal ions.
706 K.M. Al-Qahtani / Journal of Taibah University for Science 10 (2016) 700708
100
90
80
70
% Metal Removal
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
0 20 40 60 80
Metal concentraon (ppm)
Fig. 14. Effect of initial concentration on removal percentage of Cd+2 ,
Cr+3 and Zn+2 ions onto tangerine cortex.
This can be explained by the fact that all of the adsor-
bents had a limited number of active sites, which would
have become saturated above a certain concentration.
An increase in the initial metal concentration results in
a decrease in the initial rate of external diffusion and an
increase in intra-particles [29]. In the process of Cd+2 ,
Cr+3 and Zn+2 adsorption, the metal ions first have to
encounter the boundary layer and then diffuse from the
boundary layer film into the porous structure of plant
biomass. These phenomena require a relatively long con-
tact time.
3.5. Effect of adsorbent quantity
Different amounts of the adsorbent (0.12.0 g) were
added to different conical flasks containing 25 ml of
the wastewater solution (10 mg/l for selected metals at
pH 6.0). The effect of adsorbent dosage on the percent
removal of selected elements (Cd+2 , Cr+3 and Zn+2 ) is
shown in Table 2. Initially, the percent removal increases
with increasing amounts of adsorbent (up to 2 g/l for
selected metals). The increase in the percent adsorption
with an increase in adsorbent dosage is due to the greater
availability of the exchangeable sites or surface area at
higher concentrations of the adsorbent [30]. However,
a very slow increase in removal beyond an optimum
dose may be attributed to the attainment of equilibrium
between the adsorbent and adsorbent under operating
conditions [31]. Similar results were also reported by
researchers for a variety of adsorbentadsorbent systems
[32,33].
3.6. Langmuir adsorption isotherm
The Langmuir adsorption isotherm is the best-known
linear model for monolayer adsorption and is most
Cd
Cr
Zn
Fig. 15. Langmuir isotherm for adsorption Cd+2 by different waste
fruit cortex.
100 120
Fig. 16. Langmuir isotherm for adsorption Cr+3 by different waste fruit
cortex.
frequently utilized to determine the adsorption param-
eters. The Langmuir adsorption isotherms are based on
the assumptions of Langmuir [34]. The linear form of
the Langmuir equation is:
Pe 1 Pe
= + (4)
qe qm b qm
where qe is the amount of a metal adsorbed per mass unit
of adsorbent at equilibrium (mg/g), Pe is the equilibrium
concentration of the remaining heavy metal ions in solu-
tion (mg/l), qm is the maximum amount of adsorption
at a complete monolayer coverage (mg/g), and b is the
Langmuir adsorption constant (l/mg). The constants qm
and b can be calculated from the intercepts and slopes of
linear plots of Pe /qe versus Pe .
The obtained equilibrium data were fitted to the Lang-
muir isotherm. The following expressions of a straight
line were found by means of a mathematical transfor-
mation of the isotherm equation. The estimated model
parameters with the correlation coefficient (R2 ) for the
model are shown in Figs. 1517. The R2 values of
all of the metal ions were close to 1, revealing the
extremely good applicability of the Langmuir model to
these adsorption processes. The Langmuir parameters
were calculated from the following equation [34]:
1
RL = (5)
1 + b qm
 K.M. Al-Qahtani / Journal of Taibah University for Science 10 (2016) 700708 707

Table 2
Effect of adsorbent amount on metal removal of Cd+2 , Cr+3 and Zn+2 ions onto fruit cortex.
Adsorbent quantity (g) % metal removal

Banana Kiwi Tangerine

Cd(II) Cr(III) Zn(II) Cd(II) Cr(III) Zn(II) Cd(II) Cr(III) Zn(II)

0.1 29 38 17 68 87 48 62 84 38
0.3 32 41 19 70 89 49 65 85 42
0.5 34 43 21 71 92 51 67 88 45
0.7 37 46 24 73 94 53 68 90 47
1.0 41 50 29 76 96 56 71 93 49
2.0 44 55 32 78 98 57 73 96 52

important to improve their biosorptive capabilities, as

the alkalinization seems to create active sites by reacting
with organic components in the cortex, such as cellulose
and pectin-like compounds, and perhaps other types of
specific molecules generating negative charges that may
bind metallic ions. This last finding opens a new door to
determine what type of compound alone or mixed helps
to bind the heavy metals in a specific or non-specific
way. Particle size seems to be an important parameter
related to the biosorption capability of the tested materi-
Fig. 17. Langmuir isotherm for adsorption Zn+2 by different waste
fruit cortex. als. Small particles showed the highest metal removals,
which were presumably related to an increase in the con-
Table 3
tact surface allowing better adsorption. More research
Langmuir model parameters.
on this field is required to determine to what extent the
Adsorbent Metal qm (mg/g) b (l/mg) RL R2 amount of biosorbent may be reduced to still achieve the
Cd+2 27.77 1.44 0.024 0.946 same results as using material with a smaller particle size.
Banana Cr+3 38.46 1.63 0.016 0.805 However, this increase in the contact surface reduced the
Zn+2 9.52 2.188 0.079 0.978 flow rate and slowed the water recovery. Three fruit cor-
Cd+2 15.87 16.58 0.0037 0.969 texes (banana, tangerine and kiwi) were tested, and the
Kiwi Cr+3 41.66 18.52 0.0036 0.936 adsorption was found to be drastically dependent on pH,
Zn+2 37.03 1.93 0.013 0.979 adsorbent dosage and contact time. The optimum pH for
Cd+2 17.54 15.38 0.0037 0.968 adsorption of metal ions was found to be 6.0 for Cd+2 ,
Tangerine Cr+3 47.61 17.54 0.015 0.937 Cr+3 and Zn+2 for all three fruit cortexes. The cadmium,
Zn+2 38.41 1.86 0.024 0.983
chromium and zinc ions attained equilibrium in 60 min.
The experimental results for all of the metal ions were
From Table 3, it was determined that the values of fitted very well to the Langmuir mathematical equation,
RL were in the range of (01), which confirmed the and the kinetics conform to the pseudo-second-order
favourable uptake of these heavy metal ions. equation. Complexation is proposed as the adsorption
mechanism.
4. Conclusion
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