View article

Adsorption can be an efficient low-cost process to remove toxic heavy metals from wastewater. This study investigated the efficiency of treated Martil sand (TMS) in the removal of copper (II). Adsorption equilibrium data were calculated for Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. It was found that the sorption of Cu (II) was better suited to the Freundlich adsorption model than to the Langmuir adsorption model. The results showed that non-linear method could be a better way to obtain the isotherm parameters. Kinetic data were analyzed using different models, namely, the pseudo-first-order kinetic model, the pseudo-second-order kinetic model, the intraparticle diffusion model and the Elovich equation model. Among all these kinetic models, it was observed that the pseudo-second-order model was the best choice describing the adsorption behavior of Cu (II) onto treated Martil sand. This suggested that the adsorption mechanism might be a chemisorption process.