Removal of Heavy Metals from wastewater by Zeolite and Silver Nanoparticles Doped Zeolite

Abstract

Zeolite have been used for removal of heavy metals in many application in different fields such as agriculture, industry and medicine The present work aimed to test the efficiency of natural zeolite collected from Gadaref State as adsorbents for treating heavy metals in wastewater and also to study aimed to compare the efficiency of natural zeolite with that of silver nanoparticals doped zeolite for removal heavy metals, beside modeling of adsorption data by Langmuir and Freundlich models. The possibility of using natural Sudanese zeolite have been investigated for removal of lead and cadmium as one of the toxic heavy metals .Batch processes using aqueous solutions under different conditions and parameters have been considered, such as the concentration of ions, pH and tempreture Physicochemical characterization of zeolite was carried out using different analytical techniques such as XRD which indicate that the main composition of zeolite sample was silica and natrolite, the XRF analysis revealed that it contains Si2O4(70.24%),Al2O3(13.51%),and other metal oxide.The TGA results show that the natural zeolite was stable up 900 0C. The main functional groups zeolite were hydroxyl and Si-O-Si as obtained from FTIR study. The silver nanoparticals were confirmed using UV\VIS spectrum which show absorbance at 430 nm. The results of removal efficiency indicated that maximum removal were 97.50 and 97.10% for Lead and Cadmium respectively. Comparing the two types of zeolites , showed that nano silver doped has been found to be more officinal than normal zeolite, its removal capacity has been found to be 98.50 % .