Ultrasonic-assisted adsorption of Ni(II) ions from aqueous solution onto Fe3O4 nanoparticles

This paper focused on the study of the impact of ultrasonic waves on the intensification of Ni(II) removal from aqueous solution by adsorption onto Fe3O4 nanoparticles. Co-precipitation method was used to synthesis Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) and the average size of the nanoparticles was obtained about 19 nm by SEM. Two layouts including shaker and ultrasonic irradiation are examined. The effects of pH, adsorbent mass and initial concentration of Ni(II) on the removal efficiency of Ni(II) were investigated. The Ni(II) removal efficiency had the highest value at pH=9. Ni(II) removal from aqueous solution using ultrasonic need to lower contact time than the shaker at identical conditions. The highest removal efficiencies of Ni(II) were 83.3% and 85.5% with the contact times of 100 minutes and 60 minutes, respectively using the shaker and ultrasonic. Finally, Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms were employed to correlate sets of experimental adsorption isotherm data. The fitting results showed that non-linear Langmuir model could fit the data better than Freundlich model.