Excessive release of heavy metals into environment due to industrialization and
urbanization has posed a great problem to the world. Heavy metal ions do not degrade, so it
can give bad effect to human body and environment itself. Adsorption is one of the most
effective techniques to remove heavy metals. Activated carbon is the common adsorbent to
remove heavy metals from wastewater but it is expensive material. The purpose of this
study is to investigate the effectiveness of rice husks as adsorbent for the removal of lead
ions. The lead ions removal from aqueous solution was studied using batch method. The
main parameters that influenced lead sorption on rice husk were contact time, adsorbent
dosage and pH value. The rice husks were modified using tartaric acid before proceeds with
batch studies. Using the initial concentration of lead solutions at 400mg/L, the analysis was
continued using different contact time in range of 5 minutes to 70 minutes. Besides that, the
influences of adsorbent dosage also been studied in range of 0.5g to 3.0g. Then, for the pH
parameter, the experiment was run using the value between 2 and 6. After that, contains of
lead ions were analyzed using Atomic Absorption Spectrometer (AAS). For the contact
time, the adsorption increased when the contact time increased and the maximum
adsorption is 71% at 70 min. The research also gave similar results with the adsorbent
dosage, where the adsorption of lead increased with increasing of adsorbent because of
greater surface area with maximum value of 80% at 3.0 g. The adsorption of lead using rice
husk was increased when the pH increased from 2 to 6 and the percentage adsorption is
86% at pH 6. As the conclusion, the rapid uptake and high sorption capacity achieved when
the experiments were conducted at contact time, adsorbent dosage and effective pH. It
shown that rice husk is an attractive alternative adsorbent material for the lead ions
removal.