Abstract
A novel adsorbent substrate based on zero-valent iron in activated carbon (Fe(0)@AC) was introduced in this work, and was evaluated as a cheap adsorbent for the removal of Cr(VI) from aqueous solutions. The as-prepared Fe(0)@AC material was chemically prepared via NaBH4 reduction in the presence of ferric chloride as an iron source, followed by the addition of powdered activated carbon. The different physicochemical tools confirm the successful preparation of Fe(0) composite with activated carbon as a heterogeneous composite with heterogeneous morphology of the rock-shape structure, which could play a role in the metal adsorption application. Interestingly, the removal efficiency (RE) of Cr(VI) was increased from 52% to 84% due to the Fe(0)@AC adsorbent being changed from 0.2 to 0.4 g/100 mL. Following this, the increase rate was stabilized, and the RE reached 95% in the case of 0.8 g/100 mL from Fe(0)@AC adsorbent. This result could be due to the increase in the sorbent active sites with more contents from Fe(0)@AC. The adsorption model based on the Langmuir approach could successfully describe the experimental outcomes for Cr(VI) removal by Fe(0)@AC with the correlation coefficient of 0.977. To conclude, Fe(0)@AC heterogeneous material is an active adsorbent for Cr(VI) removal from aqueous solutions.