Survey of Efficiency Agricultural Waste as Adsorbent for Removal of P-Cresol from Aqueous Solution

This study was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of P-Cresol removal from aqueous solutions using canola stalk. The effect of Contact time, Concentration of P-Cresol, biomass dosage and pH on adsorption of P-Cresol by canola biomass were also evaluated. The results showed that the optimum amount of each parameter was as follows: initial concentration = 25 mg/L, pH = 3, contact time = 75 minutes, and adsorbent dosage = 4 g/L. The maximum adsorption efficiency was about 99.1%. The maximum adsorption capacity was calculated to be about 41.6 mg/g of adsorbent. Pseudo first order and Pseudo second-order, intraparticle diffusion models were adopted to evaluate experimental data and thereby elucidate the kinetic adsorption process. Additionally, the Langmuir, Freundlich, Redlich–Peterson and Temkin isotherm models were applied to describe equilibrium adsorption. The increasing of contact time and biomass dosage was led to increase of the percentage of P-Cresol adsorption. Conversely, the adsorption percentage decreased as P-Cresol concentration increased. The equilibrium data is best fitted on Langmuir isotherm and the adsorption kinetic model follows pseudo-second model. It is evident from the results that canola biomass have shown good potential for the removal of isomeric phenol from aqueous solution.