Fly ash-based geopolymeric adsorbent for copper ion removal from wastewater

The batch experiments were carried out to study the removal of copper ions from aqueous solutions by sorption process on geopolymer synthesized from fly ash (FA). The influence of solute concentration and temperature on the sorption process were examined at constant particle size and the sorption capacity of copper ions increases with the initial concentration and temperature. Several kinetic models were used to test the experimental kinetic data: Lagergren pseudo-first-order, the pseudo-second-order (Ho), and Elovich models were analyzed using nonlinear regression technique. A kinetic study has shown that the best fit is achieved when the Ho model was applied. The results obtained indicate that geopolymer synthesized from FA has excellent adsorption ability and could be used as an efficient material for the sorption of copper ions.