Laboratory Studies on the Adsorption of Acetamiprid to Activated Carbon from Pomegranate Waste

Adsorption is a promising alternative due to the good treatment efficiency for the removal of recalcitrant compounds, particularly if the adsorbent is inexpensive and readily available. This study focuses on the elimination of the pesticide acetamiprid by adsorption onto activated carbon (AC) prepared from a pomegranate bark (PB) biomass using different activation methods. Batch experiments were carried out to study the effect of operational factors like the adsorbent dose, initial pH, contact time, and temperature; synthetic water polluted by acetamiprid at several concentrations was used. H3PO4 used as activation agent gives the best removal efficiency with an abatement of 59% at neutral pH (similar to 6.5). As expected, the performance increases with increasing the adsorbent dose and decreasing the acetamiprid concentration until 0.5 g L-1 and 30 mg L-1 respectively. Equilibrium isotherms have been analyzed by using the Langmuir and Freundlich models, which elucidate the acetamiprid uptake on activated carbon throughout the studied concentration range and fit well the experimental data. This study clearly shows that the activated carbon synthetized from pomegranate bark is an attractive alternative to the commercially available adsorbent for the removal of BPA from aqueous solution.