ABSTRACT
Current study illustrates the synergistic influence of amalgamating chitosan with dried E. crassipes root powder for As (III) remediation from water; later being inexpensive and abundant biomaterial. The composite was found to be very effective in removing As (III) to <10 μg/L, the permissible limit prescribed by the World Health Organization (WHO). Interactions among component materials in the composite and with adsorbed arsenic were analyzed and confirmed by different physicochemical/spectroscopic tools and further verified by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. 72Physical parameters such as material dose, treatment time, and initial arsenic concentration, could alter efficiency of the material. For a test sample containing 0.4 mg/L of arsenic, 3 g/L of the material could effectively bring down As (III) concentration below acceptable limit. Langmuir adsorption isotherm could reasonably explain the sorption pattern and maximum adsorption capacity was found to be 7.11 mg of arsenic/g. The sorption was chemical in nature and was governed by a pseudo-second-order kinetic model.
