Montmorillonitic clay as a Cost Effective, Eco-Friendly and Sustainable Adsorbent for Physicochemical Treatment of Contaminated Water

The goal of this paper is to use an Egyptian modified clay found in Suez zone, montmorillonitic clay to remove hazardous lead and nickel from water-based contaminated media. The FT-IR instrument was utilized to detect the functional groups on the clay's surface. The specific surface area of the absorbent was determined to be around 433 m(2)/g. Iron particles are intercalated between the sheets of montmorillonitic clay, according to XRD patterns. Pb+2, and Ni+2 had Langmuir monolayer sorption capacities of 40 and 3.75 mg/g, at high concentration of heavy metals (10 mg/L) with high R-2 of more than 98% and 96%, indicating that, the experimental data are reproducible for both contaminants respectively with RL values between 0 and 1 which indicate a favorable adsorption of the heavy metals onto the adsorbent. In other hand, Pb+2, and Ni+2 had Freundlich isotherm represented a chemosorption and cooperative adsorption respectively. Intra-particle diffusion seems to perform a substantial responsibility in the elimination of these two hazardous contaminants, according to kinetic studies. The implications of this research suggest that composite of montmorillonitic clay might be used to cleanse water that contains harmful contaminants, the removal reached 99% and 96% of highly loaded water of both heavy metals Pb+2, and Ni+2 respectively. According to Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models the adsorption were favorable for both elements and according to Freundlich isotherm, adsorption process of lead onto montmorillonitic clay indicating normal adsorption process, but a cooperative sorption process for nickel. The treatment process is applied for real industrial wastewater COD is removed by more than 25%, TKN is removed by more than 54%. On other hand, hazardous heavy metals were removed by more than, 74%, 45%, 76%, 44%, 52%, 60%, and 73% for Pb, Cu, Ni, Cd, Mn, Cr and Co ions respectively.