Biosorption Performance of Adenanthera pavonina Leaf Powder for the Removal of Lead using Central Composite Design

Increase in population has led to the increase in demand for more products to cater the needs of humans and thus increasing the pollution levels. Heavy metal ground pollution is of major concern now a days as ground water is the basic need for mankind. The present investigation is removal of lead from aqueous solutions using a new biosorbent Adenanthera Pavonina leaf powder. This investigation comprises of equilibrium studies on biosorption of lead and optimization using response surface methodology. The parameters influencing biosorption are agitation time, biosorbent size, pH of the aqueous solution, initial concentration of lead solution, dosage of biosorbent and temperature. The optimum pH for the removal of lead is found to be 5. The optimum biosorbent size for the present study is 63 μm. The Langmuir and Temkin isotherms fitted well with a correlation factor of 0.996, followed by Freundlich. The entire biosorption process followed pseudo second order kinetics. The optimized values obtained through central composite design and one factor at a time process is in good agreement.