Biosorption of Cr (III) from aqueous solutions using indigenous biomaterials

In the present study, an indigenous medicinal plant, Tridax procumbens(Asteraceae) was used as bioadsorbent for the removal of Cr (III) ions from synthetic wastewater and the method was also applied for real sample analysis. The biosorption of Cr (III) was a two-stage batch reactor process. In the first stage, raw biomaterial was used to the conversion of Cr (VI) into Cr (III). The amount of the biomaterial was 2.5g. The percent conversion was 100. The second stage involved the biosorption of Cr (III) onto the activated carbon of the biomaterial. The result indicated that, the biosorption of Cr (III) was 98.5 % at the optimum pH of 3.2. The experiments were carried out at the temperature of 25 ± 20C. The optimum contact time was 150 min and the adsorbent dose was 2.5g of activated carbon. The effect of concentration was also studied for the design of the treatment systems and this methodology is highly suitable for the treatment of chromium containing wastewater.