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Evaluation of the Marine Alga Gracilaria Corticata for the Biosorption of Cu (II) from Wastewater in a Packed Column
Akbar Esmaeili, Pari Beirami, Abdolhossein Rustaiyan, Farnaz Raf iei, Samira Ghasemi and Farah Assadian

Biosorption of heavy metals can be an effective process for the removal and recovery of heavy metal ions from aqueous solutions.The biomass of marine algae has been reported to have high uptake capacities for a number of heavy metal ions. In this paper, the adsorption properties of a pretreated biomass marine algae Gracilaria corticota for copper (II) were investigated. Equilibrium isotherms and kinetics were obtained from batch adsorption experiments. The biosorption capacities were solution pH dependent and the maximum uptake for copper with initial concentrations 50,100 and 150 mg/L at pH 4 was obtained 74.00%, 75.10% and 79.81% respectively. The biosorption kinetics was found to be fast, about with 80% of adsorption within 15 min. and equilibrium reached at 45 min. This study demonstrated that the pre-treated biomass of Gracilaria corticota could be used as an effective biosorbent for the treatment of copper (II) containing wastewater streams.

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