Study of Inorganic Pollution Sorption from Acidic Solutions by Natural Sorbents

Anthropogenic activity has negative impact on the environment. Industrial waters are specific, because contains of contaminants that may destroy waste water treatment process. Finding of the new and cheap ways of treatment of wastewater contaminated by heavy metals can increase the quality of the environment in the affected localities and thus prevent adverse effects on fauna, flora or human beings. Sorption techniques belong to a cost effective methods that are able to effectively remove heavy metals. For the overall understanding of the sorption process, it is necessary to characterize and determine the properties of the used adsorbents. The paper deals with the sulphate and metals (copper, zinc and iron) removal from acidic solutions by the various kinds of wood sawdust (poplar, hornbeam, spruce, pine, cherry, ash, and oak). The presence of hemicelluloses, cellulose and lignin in structure of wood sawdust was studied by infrared spectrometry. Poplar sawdust had efficiency of metal cations removal from aquatic model solutions approximately of 80.0 %. Hornbeam and poplar wood sawdust had 45.0 % efficiency of Cu, Zn and Fe removal at five times higher concentration of these metal cations. Hornbeam and cherry sawdust removed approximately 99.0 % of sulphate anions from solution with lower concentration of SO42-(15 mg.L-1) but at the concentration of sulphate approximately 80 mg.L-1 sorption was ineffective.