Abstract
This paper reports the adsorption ability of banana pith activated carbon, with ZnCl2 as the porogen, towards carbaryl (1-naphthyl-N-methylcarbamate) from aqueous solution. The pH-edge experiments revealed that carbaryl adsorption onto ZnCl2-treated banana pith activated carbon (ZTC) was a pH-dependent process with maximum adsorption occurring at pH 11. The adsorption isotherm obtained at pH 11 revealed that ZTC possessed a maximum adsorption capacity of 45.9 mg/g. The adsorption isotherms were well described by the Langmuir and Freundlich models. The kinetic data obtained at different initial carbaryl concentrations were modelled using pseudo-first- and -second-order models. Acetone successfully desorbed carbaryl with a 99.8% elution efficiency.