The use of rice husk as a low cost adsorbent for the removal of copper from wastewater has been explored in a laboratory scale experiment. The rice husk used for the study was treated with alkali to increase the sorption properties. The influence of metal ion concentration, weight of biosorbent, stirring rates, temperature and pH were also evaluated, and the results are fitted using adsorption isotherm models. From the experimental results it was observed that almost 90 -98% of the copper could be removed using treated rice husk. The Langmuir adsorption isotherm, Freundlich isotherm and Tempkin isotherm models were used to describe the distribution of copper between the liquid and solid phases in batch studies, and it was observed that the Langmuir isotherm better represented the adsorption phenomenon. The experimental rate constant, activation energy, Gibbs free energy, enthalpy and entropy of the reaction were calculated in order to determine the mechanism of the sorption process.

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