Zirconium loaded banana stem fibers as adsorbent for recovery of HG(II)

Mercury is one of the most toxic pollutants which pose a great threat to both human health and organism security. a great deal of research over recent decades has been motivated by the requirement to lower the concentration of these heavy metals in water and the need to develop low cost techniques which can be widely applied for heavy metals remediation. adsorption is by far the most reliable technologies for removing mercury from water. in this study,banana stem fibers,a natural biomass was loaded with zirconium (iv) to investigate its feasibility for mercury removal from an aquatic environment. the xrd pattern for both bsf-hcl and zr/bsf-hcl exhibited mainly the cellulose i structure which consists of two distinct crystal phases. the fesem images illustrated the presence of relatively well organized,pronounced and uniform cavities distributed around the surface,indicated a good possibility for the metal ions to be adsorbed. the result shows that hg (ii) adsorption capacity increased from 45 to 72 mg/g after the immobilization of zr due to increase in the active sites on the adsorbent. © 2016 penerbit utm press. all rights reserved.