Biosorption characteristics of phosphates from aqueous solution onto Phoenix dactylifera L. date palm fibers.

Phosphates are very important basic materials in agricultural and other industrial applications. The removal of phosphates from surface waters is generally necessary to avoid problems, such as eutrophication, particularly near urban areas. This paper is focused on the sorption of PO4(3-) ions from aqueous solution onto date palm fibers as a raw, natural and abundantly materials. A series of batch tests were conducted and the influence of contact time, initial phosphate concentration, pH of the solution and adsorbent dosage on PO4(3-) specie removal was investigated. FT-IR spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM)/energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis of the date palm fibers before and after phosphates biosorption and desorption studies were investigated to confirm the mechanism of the retention of phosphates. Results indicate that PO4(3-) uptake increased with increased initial phosphate concentration and decreased with increased pH values. The results showed that the highest phosphates adsorption capacity (4.35 mg/g) was found at pH 6.8, for an adsorbent dosage of 6g/L, initial phosphate concentration of 50mg/L, under a constant temperature of 18 degrees C+/-02, and the equilibrium state was reached within 120 min of exposure time. The relatively low cost and high capabilities of date palm fibers make them potentially attractive adsorbents for the removal of phosphate from aqueous solution.

Date-palm fibers media filters as a potential technology for tertiary domestic wastewater treatment.

A number of municipal wastewater treatment systems were developed to improve effluent water quality, however economic aspects should be considered. This study was thus carried out to investigate the application of date-palm fibers filtration as an efficient method to economically remove turbidity, phosphorus, organics in term of COD and helminth eggs of secondary domestic wastewater from an activated sludge treatment process. Column experiments were investigated to study the efficiency of date-palm fibers filters media used in this work for the removal of targeted matter under operational conditions (flow rate, filter depth, and diameter of the fibers). The results indicate that diameter of the fibers had the most significant factor affecting the removal of targeted matter. Pilot test results indicated that date-palm fibers filtration removed up to 54.9% of turbidity, 80.6% of COD, 57.7% of phosphorus and 98% of helminth eggs. Definitely, it could be concluded that the date-palm fibers could offer an appreciable economic and environmental potential, which should be in a position to effectively contribute to the valorisation of such as date-palm by-products for domestic or industrial wastewater treatment in southern of Tunisia.