Adsorption of heavy metals on to sugar cane bagasse: improvement of adsorption capacities due to anaerobic degradation of the biosorbent.

In this work, anaerobic degradation of sugar cane bagasse was studied with a dual objective: the production of biogas and the improvement of the material's characteristics for its implementation in adsorption processes. The biogas production was determined by means of biomethane potential tests carried out over two months of incubation at 35 degrees C. Biogas and methane cumulative productions were assumed to follow a first-order rate of decay. Theoretical cumulative methane and biogas productions were calculated using Buswell's equation. The anaerobic digestion resulted in a 92% decrease in the leachable organic fraction and a 40% mass loss of bagasse. The average productions of biogas and methane from the whole set of experiments were 293 +/- 6 and 122 +/- 4 mL g(-1) of volatile solids, respectively. The anaerobic incubation of the raw material led to an increase in adsorption capacities towards metal ions, which were multiplied by around 2.0 for Zn2+ and 2.3 for Cd2+.

Adsorption of dyes onto activated carbon cloth: using QSPRs as tools to approach adsorption mechanisms.

The present study aimed to investigate the adsorption of dyes onto activated carbon cloths. Kinetics and isotherms were studied based on results of batch reactors to constitute databases for the adsorption rates and capacities of 22 commercial dyes. Added to a qualitative analysis of experimental results, quantitative structure property relationships (QSPRs) were used to determine the structural features that influence most adsorption processes. QSPRs consisted of multiple linear regressions correlating adsorption parameters with molecular connectivity indices (MCIs) as molecular descriptors. Results related to adsorption kinetics showed that the size of molecules was the significant feature, the high order MCIs involved in QSPRs indicating the influence of a critical size on adsorption rate. Improved statistical fits were obtained when the database was divided according to the chemical classes of dyes. As regards to adsorption isotherms, their particular form led to the use of saturation capacity as the adsorption parameter. By contrast with adsorption kinetics, molecular overcrowding seemed to be of less influence on adsorption equilibrium. In this case, MCIs included in the QSPR were more related to details of the molecular structure. The robustness of the QSPR assessed for azo dyes was studied for the other dyes. Although the small size of the database limited predictive ability, features relevant to the influence of the database composition on QSPRs have been highlighted.