Retention of a heavy metal by marl collected from aquifer substratum

One of the objectives of this work is to characterize marl samples collected from the bedrock aquifer (at 30 m depth) of Wadi Al Ghoula located in Draria southwest of Algiers. The other objective is to make a kinetics study, linear and non-linear isotherm study, and mass transfer study of the adsorption of copper onto marl in aqueous solution. The fitness of kinetics and isotherm models was evaluated by using some error analysis function. One of the major results using an XRF technique is an evidence of the presence of calcite in the weight of 13.82%. The XRD patterns of these samples confirmed the presence of montmorillonite, kaolinite, illite, calcite, and quartz. On the other hand, the FTIR analysis clarified the presence of calcite. The specific surface area of 20,999 m²/g was obtained using the BET, which indicates that the material has a predominance for the mesoporous character. The instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA), a nondestructive method, gives the elemental composition of the adsorbent. Based on the value of the coefficient of determination, the adsorption kinetics of copper in aqueous solution using marl as adsorbent follows the pseudo-second-order model. And according to the value of the coefficient of determination obtained for the two models, the intraparticle diffusion and liquid film diffusion control the process of adsorption of copper onto marl with low predominance for the second model of diffusion in the first stage of adsorption. The linear and the non-linear treatments of the two-parameter isotherm models (Langmuir, Freundlish, Temkin) show that the fitting best model of isotherm is the empirical Freundlish isotherm. For the three-parameter isotherm models (Toth, Sips, and Redlish-Peterson), the Sips model is the more accurate fitting model than the two other isotherms in the non-linear approach. Some error analysis functions are used to choose the best results.