Mango seed peel for zinc removal
Abstract
Zinc is a major element, which is discharged from many industries to the environment. A mango seed peel is the major waste produced from agricultural and processing industries. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of
mango seed peels act as an adsorbent for zinc (II) removal in aqueous solution. Their
surface morphology was determined using Scanning Electron Spectroscopy (SEM).
Whereas, functional groups that plays an important role in adsorption process were
analysed by FTIR, which were (O-H) and (N-H) stretching. The effect of pH value,
contact time, adsorbent dosage and initial metal ions concentration were studied at
ambient temperature, 25 ˚C. The optimum pH value, contact time, initial metal ions
concentration and adsorbent dosage obtained in this study were pH 8, 120 minutes, 10
mg/L and 1.0 gram of mango seed peels. Langmuir, Freundlich and BET isotherms
were used to determine the equilibrium state for heavy metal ions adsorption
experiments. The experimental data fitted well to Freundlich isotherm model with the
maximum adsorption capacity of Kf
= 0.2586 mg/g. It is concluded that mango seed
peels has the potential for Zinc (II) removal from aqueous solution.