Chicken feather fibres as an adsorbent in treating heavy metal
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Date
2019-06
Authors
Ahmad Nikmall Syharifuddin Bin Ahmad Nizam
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Abstract
The chicken feather which is a waste product from poultry farm in wastewater
treatment has attracts interest from many researchers. This study only focussed on
chicken feather fibres as an adsorbent which was prepared by chemical treatment for the
removal of heavy metal from the synthetic wastewater. In the purpose of improving the
adsorption capacity of Manganese (Mn) and Zinc (Zn), the preparation of chemically
modified chicken feather (CMCFs) was done by several methods. First, the chicken
feathers were modified and treated with aqueous NaOH solution at different
concentrations. This is to clarify the changes in the structure and morphology of chicken
feathers (CFs). Next, the dissolved keratin fragments could be rejoined back to the CFs
surface by the cross-linking reaction with Epichlorohydrin (Epi) in aqueous NaOH
solution, which will be named as Epi/CF adsorbent, and lastly CFs were functionalized
with Ethylenediamine (EA) in aqueous NaOH solution by Epi cross-links. The
characterization was done using different methods which is SEM-EDX, BET and FTIR.
SEM-EDX was done to investigate the structure and properties of CMCFs. NaOH-treated
CFs at different concentration were found to be similar in structure and properties to each
other while Epi/CF and EAEpi/CF shows significant differences. BET was done to
determine surface pore size of CMCFs. The elemental analysis of the chicken feathers
was done by FTIR. NaOH-treated CFs have been observed to have better adsorption
capacities compared to Epi/CF and EAEpi/CF adsorbents during the removal of heavy
metals.. Hence, for both removals of heavy metals, NaOH-0.2/CF has been chosen as the
best adsorbent with removal capabilities of 100% for both Mn and Zn. Thus, the result
obtained from the optimization study done by using NaOH-0.2/CF as the best adsorbent,
at the optimum condition; 0.50 g mass of adsorbent, 23.64 hrs contact time and at the
concentration of heavy metals which is 5.33 mg/l shows that the predicted model is valid to be applied in the actual system as for both heavy metals, the error and standard
deviation calculated is below 1. The equilibrium adsorption isotherm for the CMCFs
mostly fit the Langmuir model for the removal of Mn (R2 ≈ 0.9) while for the Zn removal
(R2 ≈ 0.8), the adsorption process follows Freundlich. This means that the adsorption
process of Mn using CMCFs is chemisorptions and that for Zn is physisorptions Overall,
this study proved that the modified CF has a good potential to be used as an adsorbent to
remove the heavy metal.