Removal of chromium(III) from aqueous solutions using Lewatit S 100: the effect of pH, time, metal concentration and temperature.

The removal of the Cr(III) ion from aqueous solutions with the Lewatit S 100 ion-exchange resin is described; and the performance of this resin was compared with Chelex-100 resin. The effect of adsorbent dose, initial metal concentration, contact time, pH and temperature on the removal of Cr(III) was investigated. Lewatit S 100 shows a remarkable increase in sorption capacity for Cr(III). The Batch ion-exchange process was relatively fast; and it reached equilibrium after about 150 min of contact. The ion-exchange process, which is pH dependent show maximum removal of Cr(III) in the pH range 2.8-4.0 for an initial Cr(III) concentration of 1.0 x 10(-3)M. The equilibrium constants were 36.67 at pH value 3.5 for Lewatit S 100 and 6.64 at pH value 4.5 for Chelex-100 resin. Both of the resins had high-bonding constants. The equilibrium related to their ion-exchange capacity and the amount of the ion exchange was obtained by using the plots of the Langmuir adsorption isotherm. It was observed that the maximum ion-exchange capacity of 0.39 mmol of Cr(III)/g for Lewatit S 100 and 0.29 mmol of Cr(III)/g for Chelex-100 was achieved at optimum pH values of 3.5 and 4.5, respectively. The thermodynamic equilibrium constant and the Gibbs free energy flow were calculated for each system. The ion exchange of Cr(III) on these cation-exchange resins followed first-order reversible kinetics. The intra-particle diffusion of Cr(III) on ion-exchange resin represented the rate-limiting step. The rise in temperature caused a slight increase in the value of the equilibrium constant (K(c)) for the sorption of Cr(III) ion for both resins.