Water contamination is an issue of global concern. Water can be contaminated with metal cations like copper(II), nickel(II), and zinc(II) from sources such as heavy metal mines, electronics from landfills, and pesticides or fertilizers in the ground. One potential method to treat contaminated water would be to use spent coffee grounds. Spent coffee grounds are a natural waste product that have been reused for water treatment. However, spent coffee grounds come in a range of particle sizes. The goal of this experiment was to determine how spent coffee ground particle size may affect the removal of copper(II), nickel(II), and zinc(II) from contaminated water. Batch adsorption experiments were conducted with waters containing up to 30 ppm copper(II), nickel(II), or zinc(II) with larger (710-1000 µm) or smaller (106-300 µm) spent coffee grounds. While the smaller particles reached their maximum adsorption capacities faster than the larger particles, the overall capacity of the two particle size ranges were similar. The maximum adsorption capacities for copper(II), nickel(II), and zinc(II) were 12, 6, and 7 milligrams per gram of spent coffee grounds, respectively. Overall, this study suggests spent coffee grounds of a range of particle sizes are effective at removing metal ion contaminants from water. Future studies will explore if other contaminants such as larger metal cations or organic dyes exhibit similar adsorption capacities over a range of spent coffee ground particle sizes.

Effect of particle size of spent coffee grounds on the adsorption capacity of metal cations from contaminated water

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