Synthesis and Application of Palm Oil-Based Biochar/Polyaniline Composite for Heavy Metal Removal in Water

Selvum, Peratiikka (2024) Synthesis and Application of Palm Oil-Based Biochar/Polyaniline Composite for Heavy Metal Removal in Water. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology.

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Abstract

In recent years, the pollution of water sources has become a major problem for industrial development. The contamination of heavy metal ions becomes a severe and concerning issue for the environmental effect and human health degradation. Therefore, the synthesis of low-cost adsorbent materials with high removal efficiency has been widely studied. In this study, biochar was obtained from the palm oil waste that undergoes pyrolysis method and physically mixed with polyaniline which synthesize through chemical oxidation process to obtain the Biochar/Polyaniline composite for the removal of nickel (II) and copper (II) ions from wastewater. The analysis of the adsorbent was characterized by an ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometer (UV-VIS) and Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) to characterize the composite. During the study, nickel (II) showed a significant increase which was 79.61% and copper (II) shows 68.87%, so the highest removal efficiency of heavy metal which is nickel (II) proceeded to the optimization. During the optimization study, the adsorbent weight, contact time and pH parameters were investigated. The highest removal efficiency of the developed novel composite adsorbent was found to be 80.16% under the adsorbent weight of 0.75g, contact time of 30 minutes and pH 5. Kinetic studies also confirmed the adsorption performance. Langmuir model was developed for removal efficiency prediction of Biochar/polyaniline composite adsorbent. The highest correlation coefficient ( R2 = 0.9968) shows that it was fitted in the Langmuir model and can estimate the Ni (II) removal efficiency of adsorbent accurately with the Biochar/Polyaniline composite successfully achieved.