The capacity of biocharcoal prepared from sawah lettuce plants (limnocharis flava) as adsorbent of lead ions

Abstract

Sawah lettuce plants are commonly regarded as weeds because it grows wildly in the rice fields. The plants can be converted into biocharcoal which in turn be utilized as metal ion adsorbents since it richly contained biomass. This research aims to determine the optimum contact time, weight, and also concentration of biocharcoal adsorption capacity of sawah lettuce plant on lead(II) ions. All the adsorbed ions content on biocharcoal was determined using the AAS method. The optimum contact time was determined among the variation time from 30 to 150 minutes, while char weight variations were from 25 to 125 mg. The lead(II) ions concentrations were varied from 20 to 1000 ppm. The results showed that the optimum biocharcoal of the sawah lettuce plant absorbed lead ions at 120 minutes contact time of 99.95%, the char weight variation of sawah lettuce to lead adsorption showed a gradual increase, with a maximum weight of 125 mg of percentage by 99.76% and the optimum concentration of lead metal was 500 ppm with 99.98% lead ions adsorbed.