Chemo-thermal TreatmentofTribulus tresstristo EnhanceIts Sequestering Potentialfor Adsorptionof SomeHeavy Metals from Aqueous Media: Kinetic andThermodynamic Study

The plant based renewable biosorbents have extensively been investigated for removing waterpollutants.The present study describes the sequestering of metal ions by exploiting a low costbiomaterial derived fromTribulus tresstrisas sorbent. The batch equilibrium studies havebeencarried out both with raw and chemically/thermally treated biomaterial as a function of pH,contact time, shaking speed and shaking time to decide the effectiveness of biosorbent. Thesorbent was activated chemically by utilizing 0.1M HCl and 0.1M K2CO3. A close muffle furnacewas used for thermal treatment of the sorbent. The adsorption capacity was enhanced to 25% bythermal treatment and 54% by chemical treatment because of increase in pore volume and surfacearea. The greatest sorption was found forparticlesize of 200 μm with a 0.5 g dosage at pH 6 for20 min at shaking speed 100 rpm. The FT-IR and SEM study was performed to discover theadsorption capacity of various functional groups and their binding mechanism. The adsorptiondata demonstrates that Langmuir, Freundlich and Dubinin-Radushkevich isotherm models werevery much fitted to describe the adsorption behavior.