Abstract—The present investigation focuses on testing the adsorptive behaviour of laboratory synthesized titania nanofibers towards Hg(II) and Pb(II) in the aqueous system. The BET analysis confirmed that the electrospinned nanofibers were confirmed to possess a large surface area of 740 m2/g. The fiber mats were analysed by EDX, which confirmed the adsorption of the metals on the fiber surface. SEM revealed the smooth morphology and continuous nature of the fibers. The effect of pH, contact time and adsorbent dose is compared for both the metals. At the most optimized conditions, highest uptake of 95.5% was observed for 0.01 mg/L Hg(II) concentration while it was 83.8% for 0.5 mg/L Pb(II) concentration. Since the rate limiting steps in adsorption are of vital importance in order to define the rate parameters for design purposes, the present study takes into account Weber and Morris and Boyd mass transfer diffusion models for both Hg(II) and Pb(II) adsorption on titania nanofibers. The equilibrium data were then analyzed using Langmuir and Freundlich sorption models and the characteristic sorption parameters for each isotherm were determined. The discussion also focuses on few of the recently used adsorbents for heavy metal uptake and their comparison with the present study.
Index Terms—Adsorption, heavy metals, isotherm, mass transfer, nano adsorbent.
Abhilasha Dixit and M. S. Alam are with the Department of Chemical Engineering, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad (UP) 221004, India (e-mail: adixit.chem@ gmail.com, msalam@mnnit.ac.in).
P. K. Mishra is with the Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, IIT (BHU), Varanasi (UP) 221005, India (e-mail: pkmishra.che@itbhu.ac.in).
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Cite: Abhilasha Dixit, P. K. Mishra, and M. S. Alam, "Titania Nanofibers: A Potential Adsorbent for Mercury and Lead Uptake," International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 75-81, 2017.
