摘要：The excessive intake of antimony which is a widespread trace element will cause chronic poisoning to humans. Activated carbon can effectively adsorb organic pollutants, but is very poor at adsorbing metal ions. In this paper, we modified the activated carbon with nitric acid and measured its antimony adsorption performance by atomic fluorescence spectrometry. We also determined the factors affecting the antimony adsorption performance of the modified activated carbon (MAC). The antimony adsorption performance was investigated using static adsorption experiment. The effects of temperature, initial antimony concentration, and pH on antimony adsorption performance were also analyzed. The results show that the optimal temperature of MAC was 298 K. The adsorption quantity increased along with the elevated initial antimony concentration within 0.5-4.0 mg/L. The optimal pH was 4, but too high or too low pH was unfavorable for antimony adsorption. The adsorption data at varying temperatures (298K, 303K, and 308K) were well modeled using Langmuir isotherms (R2>0.93). The thermodynamic parameters (AG0, AH0, and AS0) were calculated from the temperature dependence, indicating that the adsorption process of antimony is spontaneously exothermic.This study proves that MAC is an efficient adsorbent with high antimony adsorption performance.
