Remoção de metais pesados (Cd, Pb, Zn) utilizando como adsorventes argilas nacionais: Chocobofe e Chocolate B.

Abstract

The increase in industrial production has provided the generation of wastewater contaminated with heavy metal ions. These must be treated before disposal into the environment. For this reason it is very important to the use of processes to reduce or eliminate heavy metals from industrial effluents. Among the many existing processes, adsorption has great efficiency in the removal of metals present in low concentrations. Clays have shown excellent results in heavy metal adsorption processes, which motivates the search for clays having higher affinity with each type of metal. In this work the smectite clays natural Chocobofe and Chocolate B from the state of Paraíba were investigated in order to evaluate their affinity and capacity for the removal of cadmium, lead and zinc. Held, initially, the characterization of clays by techniques: X-ray diffraction; Chemical analysis; Thermal analysis (differential and gravimetric); Spectroscopy in the infrared region; Adsorption Nitrogen Physics; Scanning electron microscopy and capacity of cation exchange. After characterized the clays were evaluated for removal capacity (q and q) and its removal percentage (% Rem) to metals (cadmium, lead and zinc) present in synthetic wastewater through finite bath system. In order to achieve greater efficiency in the removal of metals a 22 factorial experimental design was conducted to evaluate two input variables: initial concentration of heavy metals (10, 30 and 50 ppm) and pH (3, 4 and 5) to determine the best working conditions, which revealed that the pH = 5 and initial concentration of 50 mg/g were the conditions that showed better results from 88.54 to 99.44% reaching values of percentage removal and 3,36- 4.43 mg/g of removability. From these data were developed kinetic and equilibrium isotherms that served data to evaluate the adsorption capacity of clays with adjustments made through the Langmuir, Freundlich and Redlich-Peterson. The results of the kinetic tests indicated that the removal of Cd2+ ions, Pb2+ and Zn2+ the clay are applied to the mechanism of the pseudo-second-order rate model, a time of 10 minutes is required to reach equilibrium. The mathematical models used to model the experimental data adequately describe the dynamics of adsorption, producing theoretical isotherms quite close to those found behavior with experimental isotherms and that of the models used, it appears that the Langmuir and Redlich-Peterson showed better fit to the experimental data. The maximum adsorption capacity obtained by clays Chocobofe and Chocolate B were 18.35 -21.88 mg. g-1 for Pb2+; 10.0 to 11.20 mg. g-1 for Cd2+; 8.64 to 8.69 mg.g-1 for Zn2+, indicating a selectivity of clays in relation to studying a metal affinity sequence: Pb2+> Cd2+> Zn2+. Thus, the experimental results indicate that the bentonite clays can be used as adsorbents for the removal of metals cadmium, lead and zinc contaminated water and effluent by adsorption mechanism.