Removal of Zinc (zn) from textile wastewater by using sawdust as an adsorbent

Zinc is one of the heavy metals commonly found in the textile wastewater. This heavy metal is toxic and will cause many problems to human and environment. Sawdust was used in this research to remove this heavy metal from the textile wastewater. The investigation was carried out by studying the effect of various experimental parameters, such as types of sawdust (raw and carbonized), adsorbent dosage (5g and 15g), and size adsorbent particle (150μm and 600μm) by using fixed bed column experiment. The results showed the raw sawdust remove more Zn compares to carbonized sawdust, 15g of adsorbent dosage remove more Zn compare to 5g of adsorbent dosage, and 150μm of adsorbent particle size remove more Zn compares to 600μm of adsorbent particle size. However, the carbonized sawdust with the size of particle 600μm and 15g of dosage has the most efficient of Zn removal based on colour changes and the time taken for wastewater completely through the adsorbent. This type of adsorbent removes 85.19% of Zn from the textile wastewater. The data was analyzed using a Mann–Whitney U test to determine the best adsorbent for this research. Thus, this study indicates that sawdust could be employed as a potential adsorbent for the Zn removal from the textile wastewater.