Water pollution due to heavy metals is currently occurring at Sungai Pelepah, Kota
Tinggi. Adsorption method is one of the most low cost effective methods to overcome
this pollution problem compared to the other available methods for example, duckweed,
orange peels, tea leaves, coconut shell and many more in heavy metals removal. In this
study, rice bran was used as a low cost adsorbent. Rice bran is the outer layer of a grain
of rice. Rice bran is an agricultural waste material generated in rice producing during
milling process. It is an economical product and could easily to be obtained. Therefore,
three objectives were selected for this study which is to determine the possibility of
using rice bran as an adsorbent in heavy metals removal, to determine the
characteristics of rice bran as an adsorbent and to identi@ the water quality of Sungai
Pelepah after the treatment. The water samples were collected at Sungai Pelepah and
the rice bran was collected at rice-milling factory. Three batch reactors consist of
Reactor A (water sample with common activated carbon as adsorbent), Reactor B
(water sample with rice bran as adsorbent) and Reactor C (conk01 reactor). The batch
reactors were conducted in the environmental laboratory, UTHM. As expected that rice
bran could remove the heavy metals fiom the water sample as well as other adsorbents.
The largest removal of Zinc (Zn) is 91.1% at 90 minutes and the largest Iron re)
removal is 73.0% with duration 90 minutes. As a conclusion, rice bran could be one of
the low cost and effective adsorbent to be used in large amount operation of water
treatment
