Insights into brewed tea waste as a green and low-priced adsorbent for solid-phase extraction of Cd(II) ions: isotherm, kinetic, and artificial neural network approach

In the present research, brewed tea waste (BTW) was utilized as a green, low-priced, and abundant adsorbent for separation/preconcentration of Cd(II) ions through solid-phase extraction method from water and foods for the first time. BTW was applied as a natural adsorbent, without using any chelating agent to bind Cd(II) ions or any chemical reagent for its modification. A three-layer artificial neural network model using backpropagation algorithm was utilized to explicate a prediction model for the extraction performance of Cd(II) ions by selecting the input parameters as solution pH, quantity of BTW, sample volume, eluent concentration and volume, and equilibrium time for desorption. The preconcentration factor, relative standard deviation, and detection limit were attained as 100, 3.03%, and 0.56 µg L⁻¹, respectively. It was decided that the Langmuir isotherm model is acceptable to characterize the retention of Cd(II) ions on BTW. This result pointed out that the active binding sites on the BTW surface are homogeneously distributed. Adsorption capacity of BTW was achieved as 41.5 mg g⁻¹ which is higher than several expensive and difficult-to-prepare adsorbents. Adsorption kinetics was elucidated by pseudo-second order kinetic model. After confirmed the accuracy of the method with spike/recovery studies, it was employed for Cd(II) determination in water (stream and sea water) and food (eggplant, lettuce, parsley, apple, and apricot) samples with high accuracy. The inferences of the study proved that the BTW offers a magnificent application prospect in the extraction of Cd(II) ions.