Abstract:
Nowadays, an Industrial development in Ethiopia has caused the release of various pollutants including Organic and Inorganic effluent into the water and environment. This is extremely dangerous to living things and the environment. Adsorption process being very simple, economical, effective and versatile has become the most preferred methods for removal of toxic contaminants from wastewater. CuO NPs, Ni-CuO NCs, Ni-CuO/ZB NCs were prepared by Co-precipitation method. The activated carbons prepared from Zeamays Bark were modified with Ni-CuO NCs which prepared by Co- precipitation method by using NaOH as stabilizing agent. The synthesized Samples were characterized by XRD, FT-IR, SEM and UV-visible spectroscopy. The effect of operational parameters such as; pH, adsorbent dose, initial concentration, and contact time were determined. The optimum operational condition for the measured adsorption performance of the prepared Ni-CuO/ZB NCs was achieved at 110ppm, 12, 0.8 g and 120 min; for wastewater initial concentration, pH, adsorbent dose, and contact time, respectively. Optimized Ni-CuO/ZB NCS shows highest percentage removal efficiency of 99.03% at all optimum operational parameters. Adsorption data were modeled with both the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms and fitted well Freundlich isotherm model with best correlation coefficient of R2 = 0.99109. The kinetic models were applied for the pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second-order; which followed Pseudo-second-order reaction kinetics with best R2 = 0.9969. Therefore, the current study signify Ni-CuO/ZB NCs adsorbent is a cost effective and best alternative for the treatment of wastewater containing organic and inorganic pollutants.
