Synthesis of NiO using pine as template and adsorption performance for Pb(II) from aqueous solution

Synthesis of biomorphous NiO using impregnation and calcination methods with pine template is presented in this paper. Different characterization techniques such as thermogravimetry-differential thermal analysis (TG-DTA), Fourier transform infrared spectra (FT-IR), transition electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) were used to investigate the structures of NiO. The adsorption properties of as-synthesized NiO were studied by changing the amount of adsorbent, the pH of solution, Pb(II) initial concentration, adsorption time and temperature. Besides, the characteristics of kinetic adsorption and thermodynamic adsorption were also analyzed. It was found that the kinetic adsorption data were well described by pseudo-second-order model and the Langmuir isotherm provided better fitting to the equilibrium data than Freundlich isotherm. Compared with some adsorbents for Pb(II) from aqueous solutions, the biomorphous NiO from pine template had a better adsorption effect, more than 99% of Pb(II) were removed by as-synthesized NiO.