Preparing Activated Carbon from Chestnut Shell and Binding Polyacrylic Amidoxime to its Surface to Remove Some Metals from Aqueous Solution

Currently, one of the most important environmental pollutants is industrial effluents with heavy metals. Arsenic is one of these toxic metals that lead to many problems like keratosis and hypertension, osteoporosis and bone fragility, increase in disorders incidence and skin cancer. Thus, the removal of arsenic from the industrial effluent seems essential. The purpose of the study was to absorb arsenic by activated carbon obtained from chestnut shell, walnut shell, pistachio and coconut. For this purpose, the adsorbents were first prepared and used with 2.5 to 20 g / l concentrations to remove arsenic from the solution. The results of pH experiments showed that the absorption values for activated carbon adsorbents obtained from chestnut shell, coconut shell, pistachio-nut shell and walnut shell had the maximum absorption value at pH 6, 6, 6 and 7, respectively. The results of the electron microscope image showed that the activated carbon obtained from the chestnut shell had suitable pores as adsorbent sites for metal cations. Moreover, the results of the infrared spectroscopy indicated the presence of effective functional groups in the absorption of metal cations like arsenic.