Artificial neural network and multiple regression model for nickel(II) adsorption on powdered activated carbons

Nickel removal efficiency of powered activated carbons of coconut oilcake, neem oilcake and commercial carbon was investigated by using artificial neural network. The effective parameters for the removal of nickel (%R) by adsorption process, which included the pH, contact time (T), distinctiveness of activated carbon (Cn), amount of activated carbon (Cw) and initial concentration of nickel (Co) were investigated. Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) Back-propagation algorithm is used to train the network. The network topology was optimized by varying number of hidden layer and number of neurons in hidden layer. The model was developed in terms of training; validation and testing of experimental data, the test subsets that each of them contains 60%, 20% and 20% of total experimental data, respectively. Multiple regression equation was developed for nickel adsorption system and the output was compared with both simulated and experimental outputs. Standard deviation (SD) with respect to experimental output was quite higher in the case of regression model when compared with ANN model. The obtained experimental data best fitted with the artificial neural network.