RESUMO

Cadmium is present in different types of industrial effluents, and responsible for environmental pollution. Biosorption of heavy metals can be an effective process for the removal and recovery of heavy metal ions from aqueous solutions. The biomass of marine algae has been reported to have high uptake capacities for a number of heavy metal ions. In this paper, the adsorption properties of a pre-treated biomass of marine algae Fucus vesiculosus for Cd (II) were investigated. Equilibrium isotherms and kinetic studies were carried out for the biosorption of Cd (II) ions from aqueous solutions using the algae brown biomass from batch adsorption experiments. The equilibrium time was about 300 min and the adsorption equilibrium data were well described by Langmuir's equation. It was found that the Langmuir isotherm fitted the experimental data better than the Freundlich isotherm. The characterization of the surface functional groups was performed with this method, a qualitative analysis with the study of FT-IR spectrum, using the single extrapolation method. The maximum adsorption capacity has been extrapolated to 0.85 mmol/g⁻¹.