Date seed as an efficient, eco-friendly, and cost-effective bio-adsorbent for removal of thorium ions from acidic solutions

Removal of thorium ions from acidic media using high effective bio-adsorbent is a very convenient viewpoint for the management of environmental pollutants. With this respect, this study is aimed to synthesize bio-adsorbent derived from date palm seed (DS bio-adsorbent) for adsorption of Th(IV) from acidic media. The studied bio-adsorbent was characterized by FTIR, SEM, and XRD techniques. The effective experimental parameters on the adsorption performance such as pH, bio-adsorbent dose, contact time, solution temperature, thorium initial concentration, and interfering ions were investigated. Furthermore, adsorption isotherm and kinetic studies were explored to describe the mechanism of thorium adsorption using the proposed bio-adsorbent. The Langmuir model result showed that the DS removal adsorption capacity was 43 mg.g-1 at optimized batch conditions. The kinetic findings indicated that the adsorption mechanism was in an agreement with the pseudo-second-order model. Additionally, the regeneration of the spent bio-adsorbent was studied using 0.3 mol.L-1 HNO3 as an eluent agent. This research suggested that the date palm seed bio-adsorbent could be evaluated as a beneficial adsorbent for the adsorption of thorium from aquatic and acidic media due to its selectivity and capacity.