Adsorptive Separation of Metallic Pollutants onto Waste Seaweeds,Porphyra YezoensisandUlva Japonica

From two kinds of seaweeds, Porphyra yezoensis and Ulva japonica, adsorption gels for heavy metal ions were prepared by enhancing their adsorptive properties and diminishing the aqueous solubility. An environmental benign crosslinking using calcium have shown maximum adsorption capacity of 0.67 mol/kg dry gel for lead(II), which is slightly lower as compared to the adsorbents crosslinked with synthetic crosslinking agent (0.76 mol/kg). Fixed bed column studies for a binary mixture containing lead(II) and zinc(II) revealed that lead(II) can be mutually separated from zinc(II) with a concentration factor of 45.