Adsorption equilibrium and kinetics of elemental mercury onto coconut pith

Abstract

The experiment to discover the ability of Coconut Pith (CP) as an elemental mercury adsorbent was carried out using a conventional flow type packed-bed adsorber with N2 as a carrier gas, conducted at bed temperature of 50°C. The adsorbents were characterized through proximate analysis (moisture and ash content), CHNS elemental analysis, FTIR and Nitrogen Adsorption/Desorption (NAD) analysis. Adsorption results showed that the adsorption capacity increased with the increase of initial concentrations, from 0.25 to 1.04 µ g-1 for 100 and 500 µ m-3, respectively. Meanwhile, the kinetic results showed that the Hg° adsorption could be very well presented by the pseudo-second order model. Primary results suggested that the coconut pith with proper modification can be a very promising low-cost adsorbent material for Hgo removal from gas stream