Potential of agricultural waste material (Ananas cosmos) as biosorbent for heavy metal removal in polluted water

Abstract

Conventional methods to remove heavy metals from polluted water are expensive and not environmentally friendly. Therefore, this study was carried out to investigate the potential of agricultural waste such as pineapple peel (Ananas Cosmos) as low-cost absorbent to remove heavy metals from synthetic polluted water. The results showed that Cd, Cr and Pb were effectively removed by the biosorbent at 12 g of pineapple peels in 100 mL solution. The optimum contact time for maximum adsorption was found to be 90 minutes, while the optimum pH for the heavy metal’s adsorption was 9. It was demonstrated that with the increase of adsorbent dosage, the percent of heavy metals removal was also increased due to the increasing adsorption capacity of the adsorbent. In addition, Langmuir model show maximum adsorption capacity of Cd is 1.91 mg/g. As conclusions, our findings show that pineapple peel has potential to remove heavy metal from polluted water.