LEAD(II) AND CADMIUM(II) REMOVAL FROM AQUEOUS SOLUTIONS USING HAZELNUT AND ALMOND SHELLS SORBENT MATERIALS

Removal of toxic metal ions from natural and waste waters is of great importance for the health of living organisms and for environmental protection. Alternatively to the conventional chemical treatments, such as precipitation, reverse osmosis, etc, biosorption shows a growing interest for toxic metal ions removal from contaminated aqueous solutions. The sorption ability of every type of biomass towards metal ions depends on many variables that characterize the solution. Among these, the ionic strength (I) is one of the most important and cannot be neglected during an accurate adsorption study. For this reason and with the aim of quantitatively define the influence of I, here are reported the results of kinetic and thermodynamic studies on the sorption capacity of Hazelnut (HS) and Almond (AS) shells toward Pb(II) and Cd(II) in NaCl aqueous solution in a wide I range (0.05