Regeneration and reuse of spent NaOH-treated oil palm frond for copper and zinc removal from wastewater

The use of NaOH-treated oil palm frond (OPF) sorbent for Cu and Zn removal and its subsequent regeneration process are reported. The regeneration of the spent sorbent was achieved by desorbing the metals in 0.1 M of sodium hydroxide (NaOH), ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA), hydrochloric acid (HCl) and nitric acid (HNO3) solutions. The reusability study of the sorbent was conducted using 100 mg/l of Cu and Zn at a pH of 4.5 and 5.5, respectively for 1 h. The results were to be correlated with the mechanism of the metal uptake. Freundlich isotherm fitted the data to indicate the presence of heterogeneous metal sorption sites. Zn showed better regeneration efficiency of up to 88% and HCl was the best regeneration agent. The results confirmed that ion exchange was the main mechanism for the metal uptake. The desorption efficiency dropped by merely about 20% while the sorption capacity experienced a drastic drop after reuse for the fourth cycle. The damage occurred on the heavy metal binding sites by the strong acid was responsible for this drop.