Utilisation of Rubber Wood Shavings for the Removal of Cu(II) and Ni(II) from Aqueous Solution Nordiana Nordin & Zainul Akmar Zakaria & Wan Azlina Ahmad Received: 6 June 2011 /Accepted: 21 September 2011 /Published online: 11 October 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 Abstract The potential of heat and chemically treated rubber wood shavings (RWS) to remove Cu (II) and Ni(II) was evaluated at bench-scale by varying parameters such as initial Cu(II) and Ni(II) concentrations, contact time and adsorbent dosage. Maximum Cu(II) and Ni(II) uptake was achieved using NaOH-treated RWS after 5 h of contact time, pH 5.0 (Cu), 5.5 (Ni) and 6.0 (mixed-metal solution), initial Cu(II) and Ni(II) of 100 mg L -1 and RWS dosage of 0.3% (w/v). Point of zero charge (pH PZC ) value of 4.35 suggests the appropriateness of pH range used. Higher Cu(II) and Ni(II) adsorption following NaOH treatment was due to smaller average pore diameter (34.63 Å), higher mesopore content and higher surface negativity charge. EDAX analysis confirmed the presence of Cu and Ni on the surface of the RWS. The importance of carboxyl and hydroxyl functional groups during Cu(II) and Ni(II) removal is supported by the FTIR analysis and good correlation (R 2 of 0.96–0.99) with the pseudo-second- order adsorption kinetic model. The results indicate the potential of using RWS as an alternative adsorbent to remove Cu(II) and Ni(II) from industrial wastewaters. Keywords Adsorption . Wood shavings . Copper . Nickel . Kinetic 1 Introduction Many types of natural materials and wastes from the industrial and agricultural sectors can be used as adsorbent in the abatement of metal-contaminated wastewater. Some examples for the use of waste materials as adsorbent for heavy metals include wheat shell (Basci et al. 2004); rice husk (Chockalingam and Subramanian 2006); grass (Lu et al. 2009); barley straw (Pehlivan et al. 2008); rice husk, maize cobs and sawdust (Abdel-Ghani et al. 2007) and tea leaves (Ahluwalia and Goyal 2005). Of these, sawdust showed the highest potential due to its abundance and effectiveness to remove many types of contaminants such as dyes, oil, salt and heavy metals (Janoš et al. 2009). Many researchers have reported on the ability of different types of sawdust to remove heavy metals such as maple— based for Cu(II), Pb(II) and Ni(II) (Rahman and Islam 2008; Shukla et al. 2005; Yu et al. 2001), red fir—Cu (II) and Cr(VI) (Bryant et al. 1992), mango tree—Cu (II) (Ajmal et al. 1998) and rubber wood—Cr(VI) (Zakaria et al. 2008). Major constituents of sawdust Water Air Soil Pollut (2012) 223:1649–1659 DOI 10.1007/s11270-011-0972-9 N. Nordin : W. A. Ahmad (*) Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia e-mail: azlina@kimia.fs.utm.my Z. A. Zakaria Institute of Bioproduct Development, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia