Removal of heavy metals with magnetized expanded perlite from wastewater

Industrial activities; such as heavy metal ions cement production, iron and steel industry, thermal power plants, glass production, refuse and waste sludge incineration plants are spreading heavy metal ions to the environment. Heavy metals reach drinking water, soil, plants growing in the soil, animals fed with these plants, and finally people. This result causes many diseases, especially cancer, and it must be purified before leaving to nature due to this reason. Wastewaters containing heavy metals must pass through certain treatment steps in order to be able to reduce the level of pollution below the water standards. Compared with conventional treatment methods, the adsorption method provides high removal efficiencies at low metal concentrations. Although various materials are used in the adsorption method, natural adsorbent materials have been widely used in recent years. In this master thesis, natural adsorbent material, expanded perlite, is used and 1 g expanded perlite is magnetized with 0.1 g waste toner dust. It is aimed to increase the adsorption efficiency by forming a magnetic field in addition to forming Van der Waals bonds with adsorbate of adsorbent material with magnetic properties. The percentages of adsorption carried out with Mn+2 metal are 98%, 83%, 71% for magnetically expanded perlite, 90%, 78%, 45% for expanded perlite at 5, 10, 25 mg Mn/L concentrations respectively. The percentages of adsorption with Cu+2 metal are 82%, 80%, 58%, 95%, 90%, 75% for magnetically expanded perlite at 5, 10, 25 mg Cu/L concentrations respectively. Langmuir isotherm was determined for the adsorption of the magnetically expanded perlite Mn+2 metal and Freundlich isothermine for the Cu+ 2 metal adsorption.