Adsorption of Heavy Metal ions and Antibiotics from Aqueous Solution on Activated Carbons Prepared from Agricultural Waste

The contamination of water by heavy metal ions and antibiotics is presently a serious environmental challenge of the world. This work intends to use activated carbons made out of agricultural waste to alleviate the problem of water pollution. Commercialized coconut shell activated carbon was used for the experiment. Cadmium ions and chloramphenicol were selected as the model compounds for heavy metal and antibiotics in water solution. TOC analyzer and the atomic absorption spectrophotometry were used to determine the concentration of antibiotics and metal ions in solution, respectively. The coconut shell activated carbon turned out to be efficient in the adsorption of metal ions (removal efficiency up to 90% when concentration is 1mg/L) and chloramphenicol (removal efficiency up to 40% when concentration is 1ml/L). The rates of adsorption of both cadmium ions and chloramphenicol were high at first but declined as the contact time increases. The competitive adsorption was investigated in this study by using a mixed solution of cadmium nitrate and chloramphenicol. It was found that the adsorption capacity of chloramphenicol of activated carbon remains the same while the adsorption capacity of metal ions sharply dropped by 44%, indicating that Cadmium ions have no obvious effect on the adsorption of chloramphenicol, whereas chloramphenicol hinders the adsorption of cadmium ions.