Recycling of waste toner derived from exhausted printer cartridges as adsorbent for defluoridation of water

Due to the broad adoption of electronic and electrical equipment and the quick advancement of contemporary innovations in this domain, significant amounts of electronic waste have been produced. This category of waste includes the toner powder used by printers, copiers, and fax machines to print text and images. This paper describes a sustainable and environmentally friendly method of recycling waste toner powder. The chemical composition of this printer cartridge toner (PCt) powder is carbon, Fe3O4, polypropylene (polymeric resin), and SiO2 composite. Toner powder from exhausted printer cartridges was utilized as an adsorbent to remove fluoride from water. It has a fluoride adsorption capacity of 60 mg/g and a specific surface area of 20 m(2)/g. X-ray diffraction and electron microscopic investigations were used to investigate the chemical composition, structure, and surface morphology of the material. To analyze the collected experimental data, the Freundlich and Langmuir adsorption isotherm models were used. Time-dependent kinetic experiments were conducted to determine the mechanism of the adsorption process using pseudo-first-order kinetics, pseudo-second-order kinetics, and intraparticle diffusion kinetic models. The fluoride adsorption process was shown to be feasible and spontaneous (Delta G < 0) based on calculated thermodynamic characteristics, which included enthalpy, Gibbs free energy, entropy (Delta S > 0), and adsorption activation energy. The study also discussed its reusability as an adsorbent and examined its functioning capability in actual water.