Removal of Copper, Cadmium, and Lead Ions by Adsorption Method using Chitosan from Fish Scales and its Application in Laboratory Wastewater Treatment

Higher education requires learning in the form of practice and research which is often carried out in the laboratories. The research completed in the laboratory usually produce wastewater which not only has a high organic content but also containing heavy metal ions such as Copper (Cu), Cadmium (Cd), and Lead (Pb). These heavy metal ions will harm the environment when directly disposed without being treated first. One of methods to reduce heavy metal ions level in laboratory wastewater is adsorption method using chitosan. Therefore, this research was focused on removal heavy metal ions in laboratory wastewater by adsorption method using a chitosan derived from fish scales. The objective of this research is to investigate the effect of pH on the removal of Cu, Cd, and Pb ions in the treatment of synthetic wastewater using chitosan. The effect of chitosan dose on the treatment of laboratory wastewater was also examined. Initially, the chitosan was applied in reducing the metal ions in synthetic wastewater. The synthetic wastewater was prepared using single-component and multicomponent of heavy metal ions samples. In this study, the pH was varied from 3-7 for application of chitosan on single and multicomponent synthetic wastewater experiments. The optimum of pH produced then used to remove the metal ions included in laboratory wastewater sample while the chitosan dose was varied 0.5-2 g/L. As the results, the highest removal percentage for the reduction of Cu, Cd, and Pb metal ions in single-component synthetic wastewater was at pH 7. However, the highest removal percentage for the reduction of Cu, Cd, and Pb metal ions in multicomponent synthetic wastewater were found in different pH, such as Cu ions at pH 5, Cd ions at pH 7, and Pb ions at pH 3. When applied to laboratory wastewater assessments with pH of 7 and chitosan doses of varied by 0.5-2 g/L, the highest percentage removal of Pb ions (93.75%) was reached when using chitosan dosage of 1.5 g/L; the highest percentage removal of Cu ions (28.99%) was obtained when using chitosan dosage of 2 g/L. Alas, the chitosan dose of 0.5-2 g/L did not have a significant effect on reducing of the Cd ions.