Author(s)

Ansar Anjum, Monika Datta

Department of Chemistry, University of Delhi, Delhi, India.
Department of Chemistry, University of Delhi, Delhi, India..

The adsorptive removal of antimony (III) has been successfully obtained on montmorillonite (MMT) and modified MMT from synthetic solution. The adsorption behavior of the modified and unmodified MMT has been investigated as a function of initial concentration of metal ion in the solution, pH of the solution and contact time using a batch extraction process. The optimized process can be applied for the adsorption, detection and estimation of antimony from 0.006 μg/ml (6.0 ppb) to 100.00 μg/ml (100.0 ppm) in aqueous solution. It has been observed that almost 99% of antimony (III) can be successfully extracted from a solution containing 100 μg/ml of the metal ion at pH 6.0 at 25?C ± 2?C. The investigation of the kinetics of sorption of antimony (III) on MMT/modified MMTshows intraparticle diffusion to be the rate limiting step during the initial stages of adsorption followed by chemisorption.

Adsorption; Antimony (III); Montmorillonite; Modified MMT

A. Anjum and M. Datta, "Adsorptive Removal of Antimony (III) Using Modified Montmorillonite: A Study on Sorption Kinetics," Journal of Analytical Sciences, Methods and Instrumentation, Vol. 2 No. 3, 2012, pp. 167-175. doi: 10.4236/jasmi.2012.23027.