Kinetic and isotherm studies of empty fruit bunch biochar on ammonium adsorption

The presence of excessive ammonium in wastewater due to agriculture and other industrial activities affects the aquatic plants, animals and human health. Common wastewater practice offers high cost and maintenance as well as low performance. The adsorption technique offers an efficient, economically favourable and reliable physicochemical treatment method. Despite the efficiency, the studies on Empty Fruit Bunch (EFB) biochar as an adsorbent for ammonium removal is under discovered. The conducted study described the characterization of EFB biochar together with its kinetic and isotherm studies for ammonium removal. EFB underwent conventional pretreatment using fixed bed reactor at temperature of 350, 450,550 and 650 °C for 60 min of holding time prior for characterization and kinetic studies. For characterization studies, moisture, ash and pH anlysis were performed before proceed with adsorption and kinetic studies. It was found that the increment of temperature resulted in high content of ash and low content of moisture while optimum pH was in the range of pH 7. The optimum condition for ammonium adsorption was 2.5 ppm of EFB, 0.05g of ammonia dosage and time exposure of 200 minutes. The ammonium adsorption followed the pseudo-second-order kinetic model which suggests that the ammonium adsorption process is controlled by the chemical adsorption mechanism. The finding suggests the utilization of EFB biochar as a good alternative for ammonium removal through adsorption process while increasing the biomass value.