The Comparative Study of Pure Mesoporous Silica SBA-15 and CPTMS-SBA-15 Adsorption of Pb Heavy Metal

Abstract

Mesoporous silica SBA-15 has been successfully synthesized and its surface has been modified/functionalized with CPTMS. The making of pure SBA-15 was operated at an optimized concentration of Pluronic 123 surfactant at 60 mM which yields surface area of 831.996 m2/g determined by BET. The modified SBA-15, SBA-15+CPTMS have a lower surface area in comparison with neat SBA-15. In this study, SBA-15+CPTMS have a surface area of about 711.061 m2/g. This very high surface area was utilized to remove the Pb in industrial wastewater using laboratory made water samples. Despite lower surface area and pore diameter of SBA-15+CPTMS in comparison with pure SBA-15, the effectivity of SBA-15+CPTMS in lead adsorption much higher than mesoporous silica SBA-15 especially at a lower concentration of adsorbents. In this paper, we compared the percentage of Pb removal using mesoporous silica SBA-15 and CPTMS-SBA-15 systems. It was found at a low concentration of adsorbent, CPTMS-SBA-15 yields three times percentage of Pb removal than pure SBA-15. However, at high concentration of adsorbent, CPTMS-SBA-15 percentage of Pb removal is just slightly higher than the pure SBA-15 percentage of Pb removal.