Biosorption of iron(ii) and manganese(ii) using Pleurotus Ostreatus spent mushroom compost in a continuous flow fixed bed column / Ain Nihla Kamarudzaman

Heavy metals pollution poses a major threat to human health and the environment. Unlike many other pollutants, heavy metals cannot be biologically degraded to more or less toxic products and persistent in the environment. Conventional technologies for removing heavy metals are not economical and...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Kamarudzaman, Ain Nihla
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: 2020
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Online Access:https://ir.uitm.edu.my/id/eprint/61009/1/61009.pdf
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Summary:Heavy metals pollution poses a major threat to human health and the environment. Unlike many other pollutants, heavy metals cannot be biologically degraded to more or less toxic products and persistent in the environment. Conventional technologies for removing heavy metals are not economical and tend to generate huge quantity of toxic chemical sludge. Biosorption is an alternative treatment technology for not only removal but also recovery of heavy metals from industrial effluents. In this study, the potential of Pleurotus ostreatus spent mushroom compost from mushroom cultivation farm for iron(II) and manganese(II) removal were studied in a column operation mode. The characterisations of Pleurotus ostreatus spent mushroom compost were investigated using surface analyser, Scanning Electron Microscope, Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy and Fourier Transformed Infrared Spectroscopy. Biosorption performance studies for removing of iron(II) and manganese(II) were conducted in single and binary mixtures heavy metals systems. For optimisation studies, various experimental parameters were studied including flow rate (1 - 20 mL/min) with surface loading (1.27 - 25.48 cm3/cm2.min), bed height (100 - 300 mm) and initial heavy metals concentration (10 - 100 mg/L). The regeneration study was performed by pumping 0.5 M HNO3 at a flow rate of 10 mL/min for five successive biosorption - desorption cycles. The performance of Pleurotus ostreatus spent mushroom compost for treating steel industrial effluent was also investigated in this study. The experimental data were also analysed using Thomas, Yoon - Nelson, Modified Dose - Response and Bohart - Adams models. Results from characterisation indicated that the Pleurotus ostreatus spent mushroom compost biosorbent has a surface area of 0.7209 m2/g and the hydroxyl, carboxyl, amino and amide were identified as functional groups involved in the biosorption of heavy metals. The optimal iron(II) and manganese(II) biosorption operating conditions were achieved at a flow rate of 1 mL/min (surface loading of 1.27 cm3/cm2.min) and bed height of 300 mm. The results also inferred that the breakthrough time, exhaustion time, retention time as well as the iron(II) and manganese(II) uptake capacities and percentage of removal are highly influenced by different flow rate, bed height and initial heavy metals concentration. The binary mixtures heavy metals biosorption indicated that the active binding sites on the surface of Pleurotus ostreatus spent mushroom compost had a strong affinity for iron(II) compared to manganese(II). However, the biosorption of iron(II) and manganese(II) in the binary mixtures heavy metals systems were significantly lower compared to the single heavy metal system. The Pleurotus ostreatus spent mushroom compost column was successfully reused for at least five biosorption - desorption cycles for the removal and recovery of iron(II) and manganese(II) ions. The bed column also efficiently remove different heavy metals from the steel industrial effluent in application study. In this study, the experimental data were successfully fitted to the Modified Dose - Response model and compared to other models, and the maximum uptake capacity obtained from the experimental was also very close to the value predicted by the Modified Dose - Response model. A new mathematical model also developed in this study for a better description of biosorption performance and prediction of breakthrough profiles for biosorption of heavy metals. It was concluded that biosorption using Pleurotus ostreatus spent mushroom compost in a fixed bed column could be an effective method for iron(II) and manganese(II) removal.