Physical and Structural Properties of Porous Kaolin/Co-Ferrite for Water Treatment

Aqueous solutions with heavy metals such as Cr (VI), Pb, and Cd (II) can have an adverse effect on human health because of their toxicity. As a result, it is important to remove these heavy metals from the aquatic environment to save the human healthy. X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) used in this research to characterize cobalt ferrite (CoFe 2 O 4 ) nanoparticles and confirm the structure of Co-Fe 2 O 4 . These particles were used to make porous samples and burned at 1050 °C in mixtures of (0, 3, 5, 7, and 10) wt.% of cobalt ferrite and kaolin with 20 wt.% of charcoal. These samples serve as adsorbents that remove Pb from the wastewater. The highest rates of removal were confirmed using various treatments at (pH 3, 7, and 9). A Williamson-Hall plot was used to determine the crystal size (33) nm. The FT-IR spectra exhibited spinel-ferrite characteristics. Studies using FE-SEM demonstrated that the sample was in Nano crystalline. Using a vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), different magnetic properties are taken from the hysteresis loops such as saturation magnetization (Ms) and remanence (Mr) and coercivity (