Resumen
Removal of heavy metals, such as copper ions, from water is important to protect human health and the environment. In this study, manganese coated sand (MCS) was used as an adsorbent to remove copper ions in a batch system. Equilibrium data were determined at a temperature of 25.6 °C and the Langmuir model was used to describe the experimental data. Mn-coating improved the removal of copper ions by 70% as compared to uncoated sand. Based on a kinetics study, the adsorption of copper ions on MCS was found to occur through a chemisorption process and the pseudo-second-order model was found to fit the kinetics experimental data well. Due to particle interactions, the equilibrium uptake was reduced as the ratio of sand to volume of solution increased. pH affected the removal of copper ions with lowest uptakes found at pH 3 and pHs >7, whilst at pHs in the range of 4 to 7, the uptake was highest and almost constant at the value of 0.0179 mg/g ± 4%. This study has also revealed that copper ions removal was dissolved oxygen (DO) dependent with the highest removal occurring at ambient DO concentration, which suggests that DO should be carefully studied when dealing with copper ions adsorption.