Water Treatment Using Adsorption on Soil: Experimental Study on Libyan Soil

Discharge of heavy metals in wastewater can be toxic to aquatic life and render natural waters as they become unsuitable for human consumption due to their tendency to accumulate in living organisms. These problem are good reasons to search an efficient economically cheap methods with easy technology to removal heavy from polluted water. The removal of heavy metals from aqueous solutions in this work herein is investigated by an adsorption of heavy metals on a local Libyan Soil called Ashkida soil mined in the Southern Province of Libya. The soil efficiency and removal capacity of heavy metals from aqueous solutions was experimentally investigated in a batch system. The experiments are performed in a batch system at room temperature. It is aimed to study the effects of some parameters of heavy metals adsorption capacity on the soil. A comparison of equilibrium isotherms and kinetic models applied to the adsorption of heavy metals ions on the adsorbent, and parameters were calculated. The adsorption process was physisorption and controlled by an endothermic reaction; however, an efficient heavy metals removal can be achieved at ambient temperature.