Wei Zhang,Qiao Li,Rui Li,Nan Shen,Jiansheng Li,Jinyou Shen,Xiuyun Sun,Weiqing Han
Industrial wastewater containing organic ligands and heavy metals is considered a serious public health threat, and its treatment and purification have become challenging tasks. Moreover, the organic-chelated heavy metals formed by common organic ligands and free heavy metals can cause many problems and concerns because of their poor biodegradability, high solubility, and extreme stability. In this study, aluminum-containing ferrihydrite (Fh-Al) adsorbents of different composition molar ratios were prepared and utilized to remove typical EDTA-Cr(III) in an aqueous system, and the associated removal mechanism was examined. The experimental results show that adding Al not only enhances the removal rate of EDTA-Cr(III) by the Fh-Al adsorbent in a wide pH range (pH = 3–9) but also increases the maximum adsorption capacity of EDTA-Cr(III). In addition, the specific surface area of Fh-Al can be increased by adding aluminum with different molar ratios, thus promoting its adsorption performance for EDTA-Cr(III). Furthermore, surface complexation and electrostatic attraction were proposed as possible mechanisms of EDTA-Cr(III) adsorption by Fh-Al. This study shows that Fh-Al-6 adsorbent can adsorb common EDTA-chelated heavy metals (such as EDTA-Pb, EDTA-Cr, EDTA-Cu and EDTA-Cd) in one step, with maximum adsorption capacities of 41.47, 32.33, 16.51 and 31.27 mg/g at pH = 3. The Fh-Al-6 adsorbent can be reused after being regenerated in a 2 g/L Na 2 SO 4 solution. This study provides new expectations for treating wastewater containing organic groups and heavy metals.
Purification of various types of industrial wastewater containing chelated heavy metals (CHMs) remains a challenging task due to the easy dissolution, poor biodegradation and extremely high stability over a wide pH range. Compared with the common CHMs, the attention of Cr(III) complexes is greatly insufficient. Especially, Cr(III) of the wastewater is easily reoxidized and converted into Cr(VI) with high biotoxicity during the transferring process, so the treatment of Cr(III) complexes needs to be treated more strictly. Obviously, compared with previous advanced oxidation and replacement-coprecipitation technologies, adsorption method could directly remove Cr(III) complexes in one step, thus avoiding the accumulation of secondary toxic Cr(VI). Considering that ferrihydrite (Fh) materials are widely distributed on the nature, excellent adsorption performance, low cost, and environmentally friendly, this paper proposes a novel strategy that uses the common Fh as an efficient adsorbent to realize one-step elimination of typical EDTA-Cr(III) complexes without introducing secondary pollution. Batch experiment results illustrated that more than 93% of EDTA-Cr(III) was removed at pH = 3 or 6 (a final concentration of <1 mg/L EDTA-Cr(III) was detected in the residual solution within one hour). In particular, Fh retained good performance for the removal of EDTA-Cr(III) after desorption reactions in 2 g/L Na 2 SO 4 solution. A series of experiments and characterization results suggested that EDTA-Cr(III) was adsorbed on Fh materials mainly through electrostatic interactions and surface complexation. In general, this study also demonstrated Fh for the outstanding remediation of various Cr(III)-organic complexes from multicomponent environment.