Agricultural wastes in Taiwan are mass-produced and need befitting attention to avoid pollution. Some of agricultural wastes would be carbonized and activated to increase specific surface area and pore size to adsorb more pollutants. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the carbonized agricultural wastes as adsorbents to adsorb the heavy metals in polluted water. Rice hulls, bagasse and peanut hulls chosen as test agricultural wastes were carbonized by high temperature and CO2 activated to be activated carbons. The ability of heavy metals adsorption of carbonized agriculture wastes were compared with market activated carbon. R2 from 0.82 to 0.95 has been quantitatively described by Langmuir adsorption isotherms. K is a constant related to the bonding energy and b is the maximum amount of ions that will be adsorbed by a given sorbent. Those indicate the order of adsorption efficiency of heavy metals were Pb=Cu>Zn>Cd>Cr>Ni. The adsorbed amounts of heavy metals by carbonized agriculture wastes increased with increasing concentration of mixed heavy metals. The adsorbed amount of heavy metals by carbonized peanut hulls was the highest, followed by carbonized bagasses, market activated carbon was the lowest.
Agricultural wastes in Taiwan are mass-produced and need befitting attention to avoid pollution. Some of agricultural wastes would be carbonized and activated to increase specific surface area and pore size to adsorb more pollutants. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the carbonized agricultural wastes as adsorbents to adsorb the heavy metals in polluted water. Rice hulls, bagasse and peanut hulls chosen as test agricultural wastes were carbonized by high temperature and CO2 activated to be activated carbons. The ability of heavy metals adsorption of carbonized agriculture wastes were compared with market activated carbon. R2 from 0.82 to 0.95 has been quantitatively described by Langmuir adsorption isotherms. K is a constant related to the bonding energy and b is the maximum amount of ions that will be adsorbed by a given sorbent. Those indicate the order of adsorption efficiency of heavy metals were Pb=Cu>Zn>Cd>Cr>Ni. The adsorbed amounts of heavy metals by carbonized agriculture wastes increased with increasing concentration of mixed heavy metals. The adsorbed amount of heavy metals by carbonized peanut hulls was the highest, followed by carbonized bagasses, market activated carbon was the lowest.