Binary Adsorption of Copper(II) and Cadmium(II) from Aqueous Solutions by Biomass of Marine AlgaDurvillaea potatorum

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Abstract
Much work on the biosorption of heavy metals by low-cost, natural biomass has been on the uptake of single metals. In practice, wastewaters often contain multiple heavy metal ions. In this paper the binary adsorption of copper(II) and cadmium(II) by a pretreated biomass of the marine alga Durvillaea potatorum from aqueous solutions was studied. The results showed that the uptake capacities for each heavy metal of the binary system were lower when compared with the single metal biosorption for copper and cadmium, respectively, but the total capacities for the binary system were similar to those obtained for single metal biosorption. The uptake capacities for copper and cadmium increased as the equilibrium pH increased and reached a plateau at a pH around 5.0. The uptake process was relatively fast, with 90% of the adsorption completed within 10 minutes for copper and 30 minutes for cadmium, and equilibrium reached after about 60 minutes of stirring. The biosorption isotherms of binary systems were not significantly affected by equilibrium temperature. The presence of light metal ions in solution also did not affect adsorption significantly. The binary adsorption was successfully predicted by the extended Langmuir model, using parameters and capacities obtained from single component systems.