Al (III) removal from wastewaters by natural clay and coconut shell

This paper describes the adsorption of Al3+ ions from aqueous solutions, by natural clay (from Sakarya's Yenigün district) and coconut shell modified by means of acid treatment. Batch experiments were carried out to determine the effect of various factors such as initial pH (4-9), temperature (20, 40, 70 oC), initial concentration (10 to 200 mg L-1) and contact time (1-120 minute) on the adsorption process. The adsorption experiments were performed at a temperature of 20 ±2 oC), at 200 rpm agitation rate, with an adsorbent level of 1 g L-1, produced 98.95% (at pH 6) and 92.83% (at pH 7) maximum Al3+ removal efficiency for clay and coconut shell based adsorbents respectively. Furthermore, the process was found to be exothermic for clay and endothermic for coconut. XRF and XRD analyses of the clay variety used in adsorption analyses revealed it to be saponite clay, within the larger group of smectite clay minerals. The application of Langmuir revealed maximum adsorption capacity of 149.25 mg g-1 for natural clay adsorbent (NCA), and 120.482 mg g-1 for coconut shell adsorbent (CSA). Moreover, adsorption kinetics were found to be consistent with the second order kinetics (R2 > 0.95). The result shows that, natural clay and coconut shell adsorbents are effective adsorbents to remove Al3+ from aqueous solutions with good adsorption rate (>92.8%).