Removal of carbofuran from aqueous solution by orange peel

In this paper, orange peel was utilized as low-cost adsorbent to remove carbofuran from aqueous solution by adsorption. All the experiments were conducted at 30 degrees C to investigate the effects of initial concentration, adsorbent dosage, contact time, ionic strength, and pH on carbofuran adsorption. The results showed that it was effective to remove carbofuran in the alkalic medium and the equilibrium adsorption was practically achieved in 60 min. The presence of NaCl inhibited the adsorption of carbofuran onto orange peel. Langmuir model provided the better correlation of the experimental data and could interpret the adsorption process and the maximum monolayer adsorption capacity was found to be 84.49 mg/g at the temperature of 30 degrees C. The pseudo-second-order kinetic model could describe the adsorption kinetics rationally and the rate-limiting step was the intraparticle diffusion process. It was implied that orange peel may be suitable as adsorbent material for adsorption of N-methyl carbamate insecticides from aqueous solution.