Microwave digestion and alkali fusion assisted hydrothermal synthesis of zeolite from coal fly ash for enhanced adsorption of Cd(II) in aqueous solution

Abstract

A novel microwave digestion and alkali fusion assisted hydrothermal method was proposed to synthesize zeolite from coal fly ash and the zeolite product was studied for removal of Cd(II) from aqueous solution through batch experiments. The adsorbent was characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, surface area analyzer and zeta potential measurement. The results show that the synthetic zeolite was identified as faujasite. The optimum conditions for removal of Cd(II) are found to be: adsorbent dose of 0.5 g/L, pH 6, contact time of 90 min and initial concentration of 20 mg/L, the removal rate of Cd(II) is 98.55%. The experimental kinetic data agree well with the pseudo second-order equation; the Langmuir isotherm model is found to be more suitable to explicate the experimental equilibrium isotherm results than Freundlich, Dubinin-Radushkevich and Temkin models, and the maximum adsorption capacity of Cd(II) is found to be 86.96 mg/g. The thermodynamic parameters such as ΔG^Θ, ΔH^Θ and ΔS^Θ were evaluated and the results show that the adsorption of Cd(II) onto the as-synthesized zeolite is spontaneous, endothermic and feasible under studied conditions.

Keywords

microwave / coal fly ash / synthetic zeolite / adsorption / cadmium

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