Removal of chromium(VI) in wastewater by adsorption on iron oxide nanoparticles

Civil Engineering Department, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad-211 004,

Uttar Pradesh, India

E-mail : rashigpt97@gmail.com, nek_friend@rediffmail.com

Manuscript received 15 November 2017, revised 26 February 2018, accepted 07 March 2018

The nanoparticles are used in various applications because of their narrow size distribution, huge surface area, better compatibility and great adsorption efficiency to various heavy metal ions. In this paper, iron oxide nanoparticles were prepared from low-grade iron ore by coating with ferric chloride. This iron oxide nanoparticles adsorbent was used for the removal of chromium(VI) from aqueous solution in the batch reactor with different conditions such as pH, contact time and heavy metal ion concentration. The adsorp­tion of 37 nm size iron oxide nanoparticles adsorbent was achieved 87% greater adsorption capacity of 10 mg/L solution at 3 pH with the contact time of 5 min. The Langmuir, Freundlich and Temkin adsorption isotherm was used to explain the isotherms and isotherm constants. The experimental data were best fitted by Temkin isotherm with 0.99 consistency.