Removal of heavy metal with humic acid based adsorbent material

At the development of coal mining especially in the recent years, penetration of alternative fuels which are foreign-dependent (such as coal and natural gas), the limitations related with firing of domestic coal imposed by the national environmental legislation, and the environmental problems caused by use of coal have started creating bottleneck in terms of the widespread of coal utilization. Therefore, various studies with the purpose of obtaining alternative products from coal have started. Within this context, in this study, derivation of adsorbent, which can be used for removal of heavy metals, from humic acids produced with low-calorie Turkish lignite through bio-technological method is aimed. In line with this purpose, the efficiency of humic acid-based adsorbent derived from Bursa coal for the adsorption of heavy metals in aqueous solutions is analyzed with the experiments made with Batch adsorption technique. For the adsorption experiments, synthetic wastewaters containing heavy metals are prepared in laboratory environment and studies with different waiting periods, different heavy metal concentrations in the stock solution, different adsorbent dosages and different pH values are conducted with humic acid-based adsorbent in order to define the removal efficiency for Cu+2 and Zn+2 heavy metals. The adsorption of Cu+2 and Zn+2 is evaluated by applying Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms to the experimental results. Consequently, it is determined that the humic acid-based adsorbent can be efficiently used for the removal of heavy metals.