Preparation and Characterization of Activated Cow Bone Powder for the Adsorption of Cadmium from Palm Oil Mill Effluent

Several studies have been conducted on the removal of heavy metals from palm oil mill effluent. In this study, cow bones were developed as an adsorbent for the removal of cadmium II from POME. A batch experiment was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of the prepared activated cow bone powder for the sorption of cadmium II from raw POME. The experiment was carried out under fixed conditions using 100mg/L raw POME combined with different adsorbent dosage of CBP of 184.471 Ra(nm) surface roughness. The equilibrium adsorption capacity of the hydrophobic CBP of average contact angle 890 was determined from the relationship between the initial and equilibrium liquid phase concentrations of POME. The optimum adsorption of cadmium II on CBP was at 10g adsorbent dosage for sample 1 and 2 at 97.8% and 96.93% respectively. The least uptake was at 30g adsorbent weight for both samples at average of 95.1% for both samples. The effective removal of cadmium ion showed that CBP has a great potential for the treatment of heavy metal in POME. (paper)