Phenol Removal from Aqueous Solution by Adsorption Process: Study of the Nanoparticles Performance Prepared from Alo vera and Mesquite (Prosopis) Leaves

This study was performed to measure the potential utilization of agro-waste to generate nanoparticles and evaluate the capability of it’s as a low cost adsorbent for removal of phenol. adsorption studies for phenol removal by using aloe vera and mesquite leaves nanoparticles carried out under various experimental conditions including ph, nano-bioadsorbent dosage, phenol concentration, contact time, temperature and ionic strength in a batch reactor. the adsorption kinetics by pseudo-first order and pseudo-second order models and isotherm technique by freundlich and langmuir isotherms models were applied. the results showed that the rate of phenol adsorption increases in both nano-bioadsorbents with an increase of ph up to 7, adsorbent dosage up to 0.08 gl^-1, phenol initial concentration up to 32 mgl^-1, contact time up to 60 min and raising in temperature. the adsorption data followed the freundlich isotherm model. the kinetic studies indicated that the adsorption of phenol with nano-bioadsorbents was best described by the pseudo second order kinetics. we found that the nanoparticles prepared from aloe vera and mesquite leaves had a high capability in adsorption of phenol, beside the point that they could be accessed at a low cost. these agro-wastes can be used to remove phenol from aqueous environments.