LAUSR

ABSTRACT Lemon peel was examined in this work as innovative inexpensive biosorption material for cyanide (CN−) removal from aqueous solution. The influence of adsorbent amount, feed flow rate, CN− concentration, and solution pH on the breakthrough and saturation points was determined. To determine the design parameters required to scale-up the system, this work explores six different kinetics models. The data showed that the breakthrough curve is highly dependent on the investigated parameters. The system showed perfect performance, achieving more than 99% removal of CN− at the optimum conditions for the first 25 min. Furthermore, this work examined utilising the used adsorbent, saturated lemon peel with cyanide, as inexpensive rodent pesticide by tested on an outbred multi-purpose breed of albino rats and compare the results with the median lethal dose (LD50) for those rats. The test results showed a foetal effect of the adsorption residue on the rats. This step will assure a safe method to dispose of the adsorption residue, as well as provide an inexpensive rodent pesticide, which increases the economic feasibility of this removal technique.