Isotherm study of heavy metal adsorption by membrane incorporated with activated carbon

• Main Author: Corneelia, Anak Tedong
• Format: Final Year Project Report
• Language: English; English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) 2017
• Subjects: TP Chemical technology
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/25630/1/Isotherm%20study%20of%20heavy%20metal%2024pgs.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/25630/4/Corneelia%20%20ft.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/25630/

Adsorption process has widely applied in many industries to remove the heavy metals because it is more economical, environmental friendly and efficient in removing heavy metals and other pollutants. Adsorption process usually used powdered adsorbents to adsorb the heavy metals. On the other hand, membrane technology is usually applied for filtration process. Therefore, this project was carried out to create the hybrid membrane that can do both filtration and adsorption process. The aim of this work was to study the adsorption isotherm for heavy metal removal by using membrane with activated carbon. The adsorption process was verified by using isotherm models which are Langmuir, Temkin and Freundlich models. The membrane was prepared from polysulfone (PSU), N-methyl-2-pyrolidone (NMP), polyethyleneimine (PEI), silver nitrate (AgNO3) and activated carbon (AC). The membrane was fabricated by using phase inversion technique by applying immersion precipitation method. The membrane that has been produced was undergo Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) for characterization. For adsorption process, the membrane was put into synthetic waste water solution which is lead (II) with known concentration for 24 hours before undergo Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy (AAS) analysis. The results were represented by using graph that have been plotted based on the equations of each isotherm model. The results showed that Freundlich was the best model to verify the adsorption of lead (II) onto membrane with activated carbon as it gives the highest R 2 value which is 0.9893.