ABSTRACT
The issue of environmental contamination, particularly caused by the existence of heavy metal particles, is a major and widely recognized subject that receives substantial global attention. The remediation of Cu(II), Cd(II), Ni(II), and Pb(II) ionic metal particles from synthetic wastewater using chemically treated plant leaves of Ageratum conyzoides (TAC) as a biosorbent was investigated. The biosorption process was implemented utilizing a batch system, wherein several operational parameters were considered, including temperature, pH, agitation time, biosorbent dosage, and initial concentration of the metal ion. Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin, and D-R isotherm models were used to evaluate equilibrium data. The analyzed parameter exhibits characteristics that were best fitted with the Langmuir isotherm. The observed biosorption capacities (qm) of Cu(II), Pb(II), Ni(II), and Cd(II) ions on the TAC were measured as 51.573, 30.49, 33.53, and 35.91 mg/g, respectively, at a temperature of 22 °C. The affinity sequence of these metal ions follows the order Cu(II) > Pb(II) > Ni(II) > Cd(II). The measured values for the biosorption free energy change (ΔG) of Cu(II), Pb(II), Cd(II), and Ni(II) metal ions ranged from -1.017 to -4.723, -1.368 to -3.612, -2.785 to -5.21, and -1.047 to -5.135 kJ/mol, respectively. The enthalpy (ΔH) for Cu(II), Pb(II), Cd(II), and Ni(II) were determined to be +19.33, +6.82, +14.83, and +38.07 kJ/mol, respectively. Similarly, the corresponding entropy changes (ΔS) for the same series of metal ions were recorded as +0.075, +0.064, +0.063, and +0.135 kJ/mol.K. The pseudo-second-order kinetic models yielded superior outcomes in comparison to the pseudo-first-order kinetic models. The findings of the experiment indicated that the TAC demonstrates favorable efficacy in extracting all four metal ions. Hence, the utilization of biomass derived from Ageratum conyzoides leaves has proven to be a viable and economically feasible approach for biosorption of all four metals.