The eutrophication of water bodies resulting from the excessive amounts of phosphate and nitrate ions in the water systems will cause serious environmental problems. This study deals with the adsorptive removal of toxic anions from aqueous medium using zirconium entrenched chitosan-starch membrane (Zr-CS-ST). The optimization of several influencing key factors like adsorbent dosage, shaking time, solution pH, aggressive ions, zero point charge and temperature were examined by batch mode adsorption experiments. In addition, Freundlich isotherm model showed an outstanding fit with the experimental data's, yielding the maximum adsorption capacities of 86.28 and 70.88 mg/g for phosphate and nitrate, respectively. Thermodynamic parameters, including the Gibbs free energy, entropy and enthalpy change indicated that the removal of both anions by Zr-CS-ST membrane was feasible, spontaneity and endothermic in nature. The diffusion and reaction based kinetic models were exposed to study about the kinetics and adsorption process were followed by pseudo-second-order and intra-particle diffusion kinetic models. The removal mechanism involved by different types of interactions such as complexation, ion exchange and electrostatic interaction, which were adopted for the removal mechanisms. We exposed that, Zr-CS-ST was successfully developed and will be effectively employed for the remediation of phosphate and nitrate ions in field/practical applications.
Keywords: Chitosan; Isotherm; Mechanism; Membrane; Starch.
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