Adsorptive removal of vanadium from aqueous media by ion exchange resin

Vanadium is one of the toxic elements that is a threat to the environment and is present in the USEPA Contaminant Candidate List (CCL); hence, the removal of the same from contaminated water is the need of the hour. The vanadium removal studies by the surface-activated T A-62(MP) resin is analyzed under a variety of chemical and physical conditions, which include vanadium concentration, resin weight, contact time, temperature, and pH of the medium. An efficient and economical procedure was found for the removal of vanadium, i.e., by using 0.1 g of surface-activated T A-62(MP) and the initial vanadium concentration of 40 mg L−1, which resulted in 97.5% vanadium removal from the solution with a contact time of 3 h; this removal percentage increased more than 99.9% when the T A-62(MP) dosage was 0.25 g. In the aqueous media with a pH range of 6.0–7.0, the sorption process resulted in the maximum removal of vanadium. T A-62(MP) was also examined using SEM with EDX, BET surface area analyzer, and FTIR spectrometer before and after vanadium adsorption. The thermodynamic parameters reveal the endothermic nature of the adsorption process. The adsorption rate increases with an increase in the temperature of the medium. The equilibrium adsorption data is well fit by the Langmuir isotherm; the linear model explains the aggregation of the solute by the adsorbent that is directly proportional to the solution concentration. These findings show that surface-activated strong base anion-exchanger T A-62(MP) can be used to remove vanadium from wastewaters and aqueous solutions effectively.