Phosphorus removal from ore waste in aqueous solution with different mass of ore waste adsorbent from the Johor mine site

Abstract Mine waste management is becoming a growing global environmental concern for mining industries all over the world. Due to the abundance of ore waste from mining industries, this study aimed to observe the possibility of using ore waste to remove phosphorus from a solution. Although phosphorus is one of the essential elements for plant life, excessive phosphorus in water becomes one of the environmental issues, e.g., eutrophication. This study analysed the prediction contour of removal efficiency with the mass of adsorbent needed under different initial concentrations of solution. The batch experiment used an aqueous solution of 5 mg/L using potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KH2PO4) at different masses of adsorbent (2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 g). The highest removal efficiency for phosphorus using 10 g of adsorbent is 54.3%. The data verified that the pseudo-second-order model (0.9976) fitted well. The adsorption between ore waste adsorbent and phosphorus was chemical sorption, whereas the analysis of isotherm models fitted the Freundlich model, with the occurrence of multilayer adsorption on the adsorption surface. The ability of ore waste to remove phosphorus was successful. This approach is one of the alternatives to enhance tertiary wastewater treatment technologies.