Adsorption of heavy metals from wastewaters using spent coffee grounds

In the literature, several studies have been reported on the sorption of metal ions from contaminated water using natural materials including bamboo dust, coconut shells, etc. modified with the chemicals or heating in batch or column systems. Indeed, in these possible scenarios containing waters formulated, sometimes, pre-treatments increase the cost. Therefore, the aim of this study is removal of copper (Cu+2) and zinc (Zn+2) ions from two original industrial wastewaters whose initial ion concentration 2110 mg/L and 9306 mg/L by different kinds of spent coffee grounds containing 60-65% moisture.The type of coffee, contact time and the amount of adsorbent were examined in this study and the experiments were carried out with the orbital shaker and column adsorption by moist spent coffee grounds which are used according to the experimental design. After the adsorption process, ion concentrations of Cu+2 and Zn+2 were determined using AAS.After the study, column adsorption experiments gave better results and ions of Cu+2 and Zn+2 removed to below the limit values.