lead removal from aqueous solution by a superior accessible nanoscale zero-valent iron/nay zeolite adsorbent: isotherm, kinetic, and thermodynamic studies

One of the nowadays’ challenges currently confronting the world is the employment of an effective adsorbent on an industrial scale in order to be able to eliminate the heavy metals from the aqueous media. the aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of a nanoscale zero-valent iron loaded on nay zeolite (nzvi/nay zeolite) composite for the sake of removing lead ions. the characteristics of the nzvi/nay zeolite were determined using xrd, fesem, and bet analyses. the impact of various parameters, including weight ratio of nzvi to nay zeolite, ph, adsorbent dosage, contact time, initial concentration, and temperature was investigated on adsorption. according to the optimum conditions, which include a ph level of 6, an adsorbent dosage of 0.5 g/l, a contact time of 60 minutes, an initial concentration of 250 mg/l of lead, and an ambient temperature of 25°c, the highest efficiency in the eliminate of lead ions by the nzvi/nay zeolite composite was 99.25%. the correlation of equilibrium data with freundlich, temkin, and langmuir isotherms indicated consistency with freundlich isotherms. elovich, pseudo-first-order, pseudo-second-order, and morris-weber models were used to investigate adsorption kinetics, and nzvi/nay zeolite showed a good correlation with the pseudo-second-order. based on the thermodynamic parameters, it can be inferred that the process of adsorption is feasible, occurs spontaneously, and is exothermic. the results demonstrated that the adsorbent had a maximum capacity of 714.3 mg/g. this significant adsorption capacity can be used as an effective parameter on an industrial scale to reduce the lead concentration to an acceptable level. furthermore, the employed adsorbent is able to be simply separated from the end of the adsorption process via the external magnetic field. these results display that nzvi/nay zeolite is a superior adsorbent applied to eliminate lead ions from water-based solutions and can be used in water resources recovery and also for the treatment of industrial effluents.