Potential of cucumis melo rind for manganese removal from synthetic groundwater

Groundwater serves as a vital natural resource for water supply due to its excellent naturally occurring quality. Though, a variety of activities, including household, industrial, and agricultural ones, have the potential to contaminate groundwater. The problems usually associated with groundwater are high hardness, high salinity and heavy metal content such as manganese, iron and lead. Hence, the groundwater containing heavy metal must be treated before being used for daily use. The study mainly focused on manganese biosorption conditions and investigate the functional properties of honeydew rind-derived biosorbent. Batch condition was used for the experiments, and the target heavy metal was Mn (II). The study examined the effects of pH, dosages, contact time and heavy metal concentration reduction of Mn (II). The characteristics of biosorbent were determined using SEM and EDX analysis before and after the metal sorption. While, XRF analysis was used before the metal sorption to verify biosorbent free via manganese contaminant. The DR5000 Spectrophotometer was utilized to determine heavy metal concentrations before and after biosorption treatment. The optimal removal of manganese was found at pH 6.5, 0.05 g cucumis melo rind (CMR), 45 min of contact time and 0.7 ppm of manganese concentration. The optimum metal uptake reaches 1.377 mg/g and 98.38% manganese removal at the optimum condition. The isotherm study also demonstrated that, Langmuir fit the experimental results better than Freundlich, with values of 0.9994 and 0.9885 for Mn (II). The finding indicates that CMR is a potential biosorbent for Mn (II) removal. Future research should focus on evaluating the performance of Cucumis melo rind in real groundwater and investigations into regeneration, reuse potential, and long-term stability of the biosorbent, as well as detailed surface functional group analysis, are recommended to enhance understanding of the biosorption mechanism and support its applicability in large-scale treatment systems. The novelty of this study lies in the utilization of Cucumis melo rind as a sustainable and low-cost biosorbent for the removal of Mn (II) from synthetic groundwater. The adsorption behaviour is comprehensively evaluated using Batch and isotherm models to establish the suitability of the biosorbent.