Effects of Heating Pretreatments and pH on Removal Efficiency of Cadmium, Cobalt and Zinc from Multi-Ionic Solutions using Sepiolite Mineral

Due to electrical charge and high specific surface area, clay minerals, such as sepiolite, are widely used for the removal of heavy metals from environment. However, limited information is available to identify their ability for heavy metals removal from multi-ionic solutions. This study was conducted to determine the ability of Fariman sepiolite for the removal of Cd, Co, and Zn from aqueous solutions, and the effect of different factors, such as contact time and initial solution pH, as well as application of heating pretreatments (150 and 250 Cᵒ) on adsorption process of the mentioned elemnts. .
All the experiments were done in 11 contact times from 5 to 2880 minutes, in three replications and at pH values of 4 and 5. After determining the remained amounts of each heavy metal in the centrifuged suspension solutions by atomic absorption machine, the experimental data were fitted by pseudo first order, pseudo second order, and intraparticle diffusion kinetic models.
Findings: The results showed that the adsorption potential of the heavy metals depended on contact time, solution pH, and physicochemical characteristics of the elements. Accordingly, by increasing the contact time and pH of solutions, adsorption rate of the heavy metals increased in an order of Co>Zn>Cd. Moreover, the results illustrated that application of heat treated sepiolite particles, compared to natural sepiolite, increases the removal efficiency of the heavy metals from aqueous solutions.
Results illustrated that application of heating pretreated sepiolite leads to greater removal of heavy metals in the solutions studied. Besides, greater efficiency in removal of heavy metals would be attained in pH= 5 as compared to pH=4.