Removal of Lead From Aqueous Stream Using Aluminium Oxide (synthesized by simple precipitation method) as an Adsorbent

Lead is one of the heavy metals that have high bad effect to the human health which can be found in waste water due to human activities related with heavy metal industry. Lead can be removed using adsorption process using aluminium oxide as adsorbent. Commercial aluminium oxide was used as the controlled variable to compare the effectiveness as an adsorbent with the synthesized aluminium oxide. Both of the adsorbents characterized using FESEM and XRD showed that they were in y-phase with low crystallization. Synthesized aluminium oxide has mesopores with pores ranging from 2- 50 nm. Surface area for synthesized aluminium oxide (161.4m2/g) was higher than commercial aluminium oxide which 90-100 m2/.g. Study on effect of contact time showed that both of the adsorbents seemed to achieve equilibrium after 30 minutes. However lead uptake using synthesized aluminium oxide was higher than commercial aluminium oxide. Adsorption at different pH using both of synthesized and commercial aluminium oxide was highest at pH11. The adsorption study carried out showed that the synthesized aluminium oxide potentially gave better results than commercial aluminium oxide.