Minoofar, Babak, Morteza Khosravi, Iraj Bayat. REMOVAL OF HEAVY METAL IONS FROM AQUEOUS SOLUTIONS BY RICE BRAN
Chemistry Department, North Tehran Branch, Azad University, Tehran 15418 Iran (bminoofar@yahoo.com)
Agriculture byproducts such as rice bran and hulls have been used as heavy metal ions adsorbent. The present research investigates capability of rice bran to adsorb heavy metal ions in aqueous solutions in different concentrations from 0 to 1000 mg/L and dependency of adsorption capacity to pH and particle size of rice bran. Rice bran can adsorb heavy metal ions, organic materials and dyestuffs from industrial wastewater. As expected, rice bran showed different adsorbent capacity for different metal ions. The maximum and minimum percent of adsorbent were obtained for Cr3+ (91.2%) and Zn2+ (48.8%) respectively in solution containing 100mg/L of Zn2+, Ni2+, Cr3+, Co2+ and Pb2+ metal ions. When the pH of the solutions and particle size of rice increased adsorption capacity of rice bran decreased. Frendlich isotherm model was employed to calculate the amount of adsorbed metal ions.