ORIGINAL ARTICLE Chromium removal from tannery wastewater through activated carbon produced from Parthenium hysterophorus weed Dinaol Bedada 1 • Kenatu Angassa 1 • Amare Tiruneh 1 • Helmut Kloos 2 • Jemal Fito 1 1 Department of Environmental Engineering, Addis Ababa Science and Technology University, P.O. Box 16417, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 2 Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA Received: 14 February 2020 / Revised: 25 March 2020 / Accepted: 30 March 2020 / Published online: 11 April 2020 Ó The Joint Center on Global Change and Earth System Science of the University of Maryland and Beijing Normal University 2020 Abstract Discharging volumes of leather tanneries’ wastewater into the environment without proper treatment is causing severe environmental and public health prob- lems. Therefore, this research aimed to remove chromium ion from tannery wastewater through the adsorption of activated carbon produced from the weed Parthenium hysterophorus. The activated carbon was characterized using proximate analysis, scanning electron microscope, Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy and an iodine test. Full factorial experimental design of 2 4 was employed with four factors at two levels pH (2 and 6), contact time (45 and 90 min), initial chromium concentration (40 and 100 mg/ L) and adsorbent dosage (9 g/L and 90 g/L), which resul- ted in 16 experimental runs. The average tannery effluent characteristics were described in terms of Five days bio- chemical oxygen demand: 1472.00 ± 9.300 mg/L; chem- ical oxygen demand: 1800.00 ± 50.00 mg/L; total solids: 29,000.00 ± 1000.00; temperature: 21.50 ± 2.01 °C; electrical conductivity (EC): 29.20 ± 1.60 mS/cm and pH: 4.30 ± 0.71. The mechanism of adsorption was tested by the Langmuir and Freundlich isothermal models. Maxi- mum chromium removal of 90% was recorded at the optimum point of pH 2, contact time 90 min and adsorbent dose 90 g/L at initial chromium concentration 100 mg/L. Similarly, the treatment of the real tannery wastewater treatment was performed at the optimum point, which resulted in 89% chromium removal. Experimental data were best fitted with the Freundlich model at the adsorptive capacity 24.8 mg/g. This indicates that the application of this activated carbon for tannery wastewater treatment may be scaled up to mitigate industrial effluent pollution chal- lenges, but detailed investigations of the adsorbent prop- erties remain to be studied. Keywords Adsorption Á Effluent Á Environment Á Sustainability Á Treatment Á Water pollution 1 Introduction The environmental crisis has reached unprecedented pro- portions across the globe, posing major challenge for the biosphere. Water pollution in particular has become a major problem (Mekonnen and Hoekstra 2016). Freshwater consumption is increasing sharply due to rapid growth of the urban population and agricultural and industrial water use (Corcoran et al. 2010; FAO 2015). Global water scarcity is expected to reach extreme levels and affect about 40% of the world population by 2030 (Feulner 2017). Furthermore, water scarcity is considered to be the major challenge to achieve sustainable development goals by 2030 (Malik et al. 2015). The United Nation report of World Water Development of 2019 urged all nations to cooperate toward ‘transforming the world nations into sustainable track leaving no one leaving behind’ (Herrera 2019). Freshwater depletion and quality deteriorations are the major challenges for the provision of water supplies for all sectors (Lyu et al. 2016). This situation is creating oppor- tunities for governments and the scientific community to research to evaluate potential water sources for sustainable development (Hamilton et al. 2018). This should include the reclamation of wastewaters and desalination of sea & Jemal Fito fitojemal120@gmail.com Dinaol Bedada dinaolsend@gmail.com 123 Energ. Ecol. Environ. (2020) 5(3):184–195 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40974-020-00160-8