Kinetic and Equilibrium Studies on Biosorption of Zinc Using Tamarindus indica L.

The removal of the metals occur actively only with living cells and/or passively at the surface of dead cells. This is known as biosorption. In this study, the bio-sorption of Zinc from aqueous solution was investigated by using Tamarindus indica L as an agricultural waste. The effects of agitation time, P^H and biomass dose were determined and the fitness of bio-sorption data for Freundlich and Langmuir adsorption models was investigated. It was found that bio-sorption of zinc on to Tamarindus indica L was suitable to the Langmuir isotherm model. Two kinetic models, the pseudo-first order and pseudo-second order equations were selected to follow the adsorption process. The pseudo second order kinetics was the best for the adsorption of zinc with a correlation coefficient of 0.98. The maximum sorption capacity of the sorbent for the removal of zinc was found to be 66%.