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.