Investigation on the potential of Phyllanthus Niruri powder in removing Cu(II) ions

Abstract

The Cu(II) adsorption efficiency of Phyllanthus Niruri powder was analyzed in this work. The Response Surface Methodology(RSM) using Central Composite Design (CCD) was employed to find out the optimum parameters for Cu(II) removal using Phyllanthus Niruri powder(PNP). Metal uptake(q_e) was chosen as the response function. The optimized results showed that, P. Niruri works best at pH 2, temperature 63ᵒC and an adsorbent dosage 0.5g/l. The optimum contact time was 15 minutes. The optimum conditions were verified with synthetic Cu(II) solution. The outcome is 68% Cu(II) adsorption. This value is 10% below the RSM predicted percentage.  Then, it was tested on industrial waste containing a mix of heavy metals including Cu(II). The Cu(II) adsorption was 39%. This low adsorption capacity could be due to competitiveness amongst other metals present in the sludge sample. The experimental results for industrial sludge solution fitted Langmuir isotherm indicating that single layer adsorption occurred. The study concludes that P. Niruri powder can be used as a cheap biosorbent for Cu(II) present in trace amount.