SeongHeon Kim1, JongHwan Park1, DongCheol Seo2, JuSik Cho2, YeongRae Ha1 and JongSoo Heo1, (1)Divison of Applied Life Science (BK21 Program) & Institute of Agriculture and Life Science, GyeongSang National University, Jinju, South Korea (2)Department of Bio-Environmental Sciences, Sunchon National University, Sunchon, South Korea
Little research has been conducted to explore the heavy metal removal potential of biochar. The adsorption characteristics of heavy metals by pepper waste biochar (pyrolysis at 600°C for 4 hour) as heavy metal absorbent were investigated. The pepper waste biochar was characterized by SEM-EDS and FT-IR, and heavy metal removal was studied using Freundlich and Langmuir equations. The removal rates of heavy metals were higher in the order of Pb > Cu > Cd, showing that the adsorption efficiency of Pb was higher than those of any other heavy metals. Freundlich and Langmuir adsorption isotherms were used to model the equilibrium adsorption data obtained for adsorption of heavy metals on biochar produced from pepper waste. Pb, Cu, and Cd equilibrium adsorption data were fitted well to the two models, but Pb gave a better fit to Langmuir model. Heavy metals were observed on the biochar surface after adsorption by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). Main functional groups were aromatic C¬O ring stretching (1160 cm-1, 1384 cm-1, 1621 cm-1) by FT-IR analysis. Thus, biochar produced from pepper waste could be useful adsorbent for treating heavy metal wastewaters
