Abstract
Used/Spent Salvadora persica L. leaves and stems constitute a major portion of the waste generated by various foods and oil industries including laboratories of traditional medicines. The valorization of this waste by applying it to the remediation of industrial effluent may contribute to a cleaner and green environment. The quantitative removal of toxic metals from wastewater has been demonstrated, which may be attributed to the presence of various functional groups on the adsorbent. The probable active sites were determined by a comparative study of the FTIR spectra of the metal laden adsorbent and the free adsorbent. The adsorption behavior was found to be befitting to Langmuir model. However, Freundlich and Dubinin and Radushkevich models have also found to be almost befitting to the experimental data. The adsorption process was found to follow pseudo-first order kinetic model. However, within contact time of 50 min, the pseudo-second-order model and intraparticle diffusion model have also been followed. The evaluated thermodynamic parameters suggest the spontaneous nature of adsorption. The biomass was found to retain 98% of the sorption capacity up to 3 cycles. The proposed method offers a very simple, low cost, effective and eco-friendly alternative methodology for the determination and extraction of metal ions from wastewater samples.