Kinetics and Isotherm Studies on Adsorption of Hexavalent Chromium Using Activated Carbon from Water Hyacinth

Abstract

The present study is focused on the use of activated carbon derived from water hyacinth (WH-AC) as adsorbent for the removal of Cr(VI) from aqueous solution. The optimized WH-AC was found to be mesoporous and considered as granular. The surface area of 11.564 m2/g was found to have a good adsorption capacity. The adsorption data of the optimized WH-AC followed a pseudo-second order kinetics and the Freundlich isotherm model. Based on the correlation coefficient obtained from pseudo-second-order kinetic model, the R2 values were all above 0.99, which is closer to unity of one (1) indicating that it followed a chemisorption process. The adsorption capacity of WH-AC increased from 1.98 to 4.68 mg/g when adsorbate concentration increased from 20 to 50 mg/l. The overall study proved that the adsorption by activated carbon derived from water hyacinth can be an alternative and efficient technique in hexavalent chromium removal.