The application of diffusion–reaction mixed model to assess the best experimental conditions for bark chemical activation to improve copper(II) ions adsorption

Natural sorbents have been thoroughly assessed to determine their adsorption capabilities to remove pollutants from industrial wastewaters. Among them, pine bark has demonstrated potential for carrying out the removal of contaminants, particularly heavy metals, at the level of traces present in dissolved state. Nevertheless, to move towards the wastewater treatment implementation at large scale, the handling and processing requirements of pine bark to optimise the adsorption of heavy metals must be fully assessed. This research study presents a new mathematical model to evaluate the impact of acid pretreatment of pine bark on heavy metals adsorption at different pine bark-aqueous solution pulp densities. A diffusion–reaction mixed model was developed and applied to the case study of copper(II) adsorption onto pine bark. The low binding energy inferred from analysing the adsorption isotherms suggested that a diffusive mechanism is governing the whole process. The mixed diffusion–reaction kinetic model indicated that the activation increases the rate at which metal ions are adsorbed, but it reduces the maximum achievable adsorption which in turn restricts its usefulness to relatively high pulp densities (above 10 g/L). The latter constitutes the first step towards optimising the use of bark pine for treating wastewater polluted with heavy metals and for establishing rules for scaling-up the process.