Adsorption of copper and lead in single and binary metal system onto Fumaria indica biomass

Munawar Iqbal and Rasheed Ahmad Khera

Abstract

Among heavy metals, lead and copper pose a significant threat to the due to their toxicity, incremental accumulation in the food chain and persistence in the ecosystem. Lead and copper are introduced into water from various industries
and other human activities. Present study was aimed to remove lead and copper from aqueous media using Fumaria indica biomass as a function of metal ions initial concentration. Both metal removal was investigated in single and binary
system. For comparison isotherm models i.e., Langmuir and Freundlich were applied on experimental adsorption data. Results showed that the copper behavior was different in single and binary metal system, whereas lead adsorption remained the same in both single and binary metal systems. The Freundlich isotherm model fitted well to the adsorption data of both single and binary metal system. The thermodynamic parameters i.e., ∆G0, was measured to get insight into adsorption phenomenon and negative value of ∆G0 suggest that the adsorption process was spontaneous in nature. Results showed that in multimetal system the adsorption of specific metal ion may change and during metal adsorption from industrial wastewater this effect must be taken in account before generalization of results.