%0 Journal Article
	%A L. Khalfa and  M. Bagane and  M. L. Cervera and  S. Najjar
	%D 2016
	%J International Journal of Chemical and Molecular Engineering
	%B World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology
	%I Open Science Index 113, 2016
	%T Competitive Adsorption of Heavy Metals onto Natural and Activated Clay: Equilibrium, Kinetics and Modeling
	%U https://publications.waset.org/pdf/10004535
	%V 113
	%X The aim of this work is to present a low cost adsorbent
for removing toxic heavy metals from aqueous solutions. Therefore,
we are interested to investigate the efficiency of natural clay minerals
collected from south Tunisia and their modified form using sulfuric
acid in the removal of toxic metal ions: Zn(II) and Pb(II) from
synthetic waste water solutions. The obtained results indicate that
metal uptake is pH-dependent and maximum removal was detected to
occur at pH 6. Adsorption equilibrium is very rapid and it was
achieved after 90 min for both metal ions studied. The kinetics results
show that the pseudo-second-order model describes the adsorption
and the intraparticle diffusion models are the limiting step. The
treatment of natural clay with sulfuric acid creates more active sites
and increases the surface area, so it showed an increase of the
adsorbed quantities of lead and zinc in single and binary systems. The
competitive adsorption study showed that the uptake of lead was
inhibited in the presence of 10 mg/L of zinc. An antagonistic binary
adsorption mechanism was observed. These results revealed that clay
is an effective natural material for removing lead and zinc in single
and binary systems from aqueous solution.
	%P 583 - 589