Abstract

Adsorption is an easy, efficient and energy saving method to remove heavy metal ions from water/wastewater. A promising adsorbent needs to be developed from no-cost agricultural/industrial wastes. In this research, cashew nut shells, the waste from a food processing factory were used to adsorb lead ions in aqueous solution. Various initial concentrations of lead were investigated and the adsorption kinetics was determined. Five kinetics models were applied and fitted to the experimental data: pseudo-first-order, pseudo-second-order, Elovich, intraparticle diffusion and liquid film diffusion models. The results showed that the pseudo-second-order model was the best to describe the adsorption of lead ions onto cashew nut shells.