Study on wood waste materials' capacity to retain heavy metal ions from aqueous solutions, under dynamic conditions

Abstract

Wood residues are commonly used in the furniture industry and in agriculture, as composts' ingredients or in different techniques as absorbents, having a large specific surface and a chemical composition appropriate for achieving adsorption processes. As a result of previous experiments it is found that the activation by boiling in acidic solutions of sawdust, in addition to increasing the adsorption capacity, it does not add any color to the treated solutions. In the present study we tested the retention capacity of two heavy metal ions (Cu and Co) in solutions of different concentrations, on sawdust processed by grinding, sieving and activation in hydrochloric acid. As main results, copper ions were retained between 63.2 – 91.16% and cobalt ions, between 79.9 – 91.16%, considering the initial concentrations of the solutions.