Fast sono assisted ferrofluid mediated silver super - Adsorption over magnesium ferrite-copper sulfide chalcogenide with the aid of multivariate optimization

This research focuses on the development of a fast ultrasonic assisted ferrofluid mediated methodology to obtain the optimum conditions for silver adsorption from aqueous solutions. For this purpose magnesium ferrite-copper sulfide chalcogenide was synthesized and employed as an efficient nanosorbent. The sorbent was characterized with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and vibrational sample magnetometry (VSM) techniques. For obtaining the optimal operating conditions of silver adsorption, response surface methodology (RSM) was used. Tests were performed by Box-Behnken design (BBD). The value of optimum conditions for silver adsorption include pH = 2.5, adsorbent dosage = 10.0 mg, sonicating time = 1 min and ionic strength = 2.2%. According optimum conditions, percentage of removal should be 99.34%. With replication of similar experiment (n = 6) average percentage of 100 ± 0.95% was obtained for Ag+ adsorption which shows good agreement between predicted and experimental results. Silver ion adsorption follow Langmuir model with maximum sorption capacity of 2113 mg g−1. Ultrasonic power helped to prepare ferrofluid and demonstrated that had an important role in better dispersing of it in solution and efficient adsorption of analyte.