Adsorption performance of sugarcane bagasse as activated Ccrbon to reduce heavy metal concentration in aqueous solution

The use of sugarcane bagasse which is an agro waste from sugar industries has been studied as an alternative source for the production of activated carbon to reduce heavy metal concentration in aqueous solution. The structural component of sugarcane bagasse which made up of carbon material makes it suitable to be used as adsorbent instead of throwing it directly to environment without knowing the value of it. Therefore, this study aim to investigate the potential use of sugarcane bagassse, treated with sodium hydroxide, to reduce selected heavy metals (Cu, Cr, Cd, Pb and Ni) in aqueous solution. Chemically activated sugarcane bagasse was used to reduce heavy metals at a constant temperature of 30°C and agitation rate of 150 rpm. In this study, the variation of adsorbent weight and contact time were used as parameters to determine the effective time and the amount of adsorbent that should be used in the reduction of heavy metal while keeping the initial heavy metal concentration constant. It was found that, the effective adsorbent weight for the reduction of heavy metals was 1.0g with contact time of 80 minutes except for Ni which occurred at 50 minutes contact time. At these adsorbent weight and contact time, the reduction of each heavy metal was found to be maximum, with Cu achieved 97.52% reduction, 97.08% for Cr, 98.30% for Cd, 97.04% for Pb and a total 98.80% reduction for Ni. When compared with commercial adsorbent, activated sugarcane bagasse showed better results in heavy metal reduction. The reduction was nearly 100% for every heavy metal when treated with activated sugarcane bagasse whereas silica gel can only achieved maximum reduction of less than 12%.