Abstract

The present work seeks to investigate the ability of polypyrrole/titanium dioxide nanocomposite to adsorb cadmium ions from aqueous solution. The impact of various experimental conditions, including solution pH, adsorbent dosage, adsorption time and initial concentration on the uptake of cadmium were studied. The adsorption kinetic was studied with the first-order, secondorder, pseudo-first-order, pseudo-second-order and Morris–Weber models. The results revealed that adsorption process is controlled by pseudo-second-order model which illustrated that the adsorption process of cadmium is chemisorption-controlled. The adsorption capacity obtained from this model is 20.49 mg/g which close to the experimental value. The study yielded the result that when the initial concentration of the solution changed from 20 mg/l to 120 mg/l, the adsorption capacity increased from 0.99 to 24.52 mg/g. Further, Langmuir, Freundlich and Temkin isotherm models were applied to investigate the adsorption isotherm. Based on the results of the adsorption isotherm, Freundlich isotherm proved to be the best fit with the experimental data. Also, the morphology, chemical structure and thermal stability of adsorbent were studied by using SEM, EDX, FTIR, and TGA.

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