Cd(II) Adsorption Using Waste Sludge from a Municipal Wastewater Treatment System

Abstract

In this study, dried waste activated sludge from a municipal wastewater treatment plant was used for Cd (II) ion adsorption with and without pre-treatment. Waste activated sludge was treated with 1% Hydrogen peroxide. Cd (II) adsorption was investigated at an initial Cd(II) concentration of 50 mgL−1 with an adsorbent particle size of 50-70 mesh in erlenmeyer flasks used as batch reactors. The pseudo-first and pseudo-second order kinetic models were used to determine the correlation among the experimental data. The results showed that pretreatment of waste sludge with H2O2 increased equilibrium adsorption capacity. The equilibrium adsorption capacity values obtained for waste activated sludge with and without pretreatment were 39.84 and 20.2 mgg−1, respectively, which increased with increasing solution pH.  The correlation coefficients obtained for pseudo-first (R2>0.87) and pseudo -second (R2>0.96) order kinetic models showed that the latter model better described the experimental data on both types of treated and untreated activated sludge than the latter