Modeling Date Palm Trunk Fibers (DPTF) Packed Bed Adsorption Performances for Cadmium Removal from Aqueous Wastewater Ahmad S. Awad 1,* , Banan Hudaib 2 and Waid Omar 2 1 Mechanical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering Technology, Al-Balqa Applied University, Amman, 11134, Jordan 2 Chemical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering Technology, Al-Balqa Applied University, Amman, 11134, Jordan * Corresponding Author: Ahmad S. Awad. Emails: ahmad.awwad@bau.edu.jo; ahmadsawwadt64@yahoo.com Received: 25 May 2022 Accepted: 09 August 2022 ABSTRACT In this study, the potential of a low-cost bio-adsorbent, taken directly from Date Palm Trunk Fibers (DPTF) agri- cultural wastes, for cadmium ions removal from wastewaters is examined. The performances of this adsorbent are evaluated by building breakthrough curves at different bed heights and flow rates while keeping other parameters, such as the initial feed concentration, pH, and particle size, constant. The results indicate that the maximum cad- mium adsorption capacity of DTPF can be obtained from the Thomas model as 51.5 mg/g with the most extended mass transfer zone of 83 min at the lowest flow rate at 5 ml/min. The saturation concentrations (N O ) and the rate constant (k ab ) obtained from the BDST (bed depth service time) model are 7022.16 mg/l and 0.0536 l/mg.min, respectively. Using the Yon-Nelsen Model, it is found that operating at a lower flow rate leads to a larger value of the elapsed needed time to reach a 50% breakthrough. The Wolborska model indicates that the bed capacity increases with decreasing the flow rate, and the adsorbent can achieve a greater external mass transfer kinetic coefficient (2.271/min) at a higher flow rate. KEYWORDS Cadmium ions; adsorption; fixed bed; biodorbent; pollutant; date palm trunk fibers wastewater; treatment; breakthrough curves; modeling 1 Introduction A vast amount of date palm biomass wastes are collected yearly without proper usage; biomass is organic matter that can be attained from living organisms like plants, trees, algae, organic waste, etc.; Annually, about 20 kg of organic waste is generated from only one date palm tree [1,2]. Often, date palm wastes are burned or buried in landfills; thus, this causes pollution issues. Its large quantities and natural availability make it attractive and competitive for different thermal and physical/chemical technologies for good utilization of date palm biomass in wastewater treatment, such used date palm fibers as promising adsorbents for unwanted materials removal [3]. As the world’ s population increases, our clean water sources have decreased. This deficiency has moved our focus toward pollution reduction and control. In Jordan, which is classified as a semi-arid to arid country and considered one of the world’ s poorest water resources, disposal of wastes and wastewater without treatment in lands and water bodies is no longer possible [4]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: 10.32604/fdmp.2023.024300 ARTICLE ech T Press Science Published Online: 24 November 2022