Abstract
Milled Korean pine (Pinus densiflora) wood was used to evaluate its adsorption capacity of Cu(II) ions from aqueous solution by running a series of batch experiments. Prior to the tests, the milled woods were pretreated with 1N NaOH, 1N $HNO_3$, and distilled water, respectively, to examine the effect of pretreatment. Within the tested pH range between 3 and 6, copper adsorption efficiency of NaOH-treated wood(96~99%) was superior to the $HNO_3$-treated wood(19~31%) and distilled water-treated wood(18~35%). The efficiency of copper removal by wood enhanced with increasing solution pH and reached a maximum copper ion uptake at pH 5~6. Adsorption behavior of copper onto both raw and $HNO_3$-treated woods was mainly attributed to interaction with carboxylic acid group. For NaOH-treated wood, carboxylate ion produced by hydrolysis or saponification was a major functional group responsible for Cu sorption. NaOH treatment of wood changed the ester and carboxylic acid groups into carboxylate group, whereas $HNO_3$ treatment did not affect the production of functional groups which could bind copper. A pseudo second-order kinetic model fitted well for the sorption of copper ion onto NaOH-treated wood. A batch isotherm test using NaOH-treated wood showed that equilibrium sorption data were better represented by the Langmuir model than the Freundlich model.
