Characterisation of adsorbents prepared by pyrolysis of sludge and sludge/disposal filter cake mix

Copper and zinc removal from water (pH = 5.0) using adsorbents produced from slow and fast pyrolysis of industrial sludge and industrial sludge mixed with a disposal filter cake (FC), post treated with HCl, is investigated in comparison with a commercial adsorbent F400. The results show that a pseudo-second order kinetics model is followed. The Langmuir-Freundlich isotherm model is found to fit the data best. The capacity for heavy metal removal of studied adsorbents is generally better than that of commercial F400. The dominant heavy metal removal mechanism is cation exchange. Higher heavy metal removal capacity is associated with fast pyrolysis adsorbents and sludge/FC derived adsorbents, due to enhanced cation exchange. Improvement of Zn²⁺ removal via 1 N HCl post-treatment is only effective when exchangeable cations of the adsorbent are substituted with H⁺ ions, which boost the cation exchange capacity. Increase of temperature also enhances metal removal capacity. Fast pyrolysis sludge-based adsorbents can be reused after several adsorption-desorption cycles.