Low Cost and Eco-Friendly Removal of Toxic Heavy Metals from Industrial Wastewater

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Home Economics Faculty, Al-Azhar University, Tanta 31732, Egypt

2 Azhar Uni

3 Arab Center for Nanotechnology, Egypt

Abstract

Although water is the most available resource on the earth, its contamination and shortage in many countries makes it necessary to find out low-cost and eco-friendly materials to remove heavy metals (HMs) from contaminated wastewater. Thus, this study examined the use of sorbents such as eggshell (ES), banana peels (BP), watermelon rind (WR), and their nano form (ESN, BPN, and WRN) to remove HMs (Cu, Cr, Fe, Pb, and Zn) from industrial contaminated wastewater. Nano forms of these sorbents were characterized by TEM and used in the experiment at two addition rates of each sorbent (i.e. 0.5 g and 1.0 g of each normal studied sorbents and 0.05 g and 0.1 g of each nano studied sorbents). The results revealed high efficiency for removing HMs, especially when using ES, ESN, and BPN. These sorbents achieved nearly 100% removal percentage in all detected HMs in the industrial wastewater especially Cu and Pb. These results demonstrate a high potential use of the studied sorbents for HMs removal from contaminated wastewater especially nano forms due to their uniqe properties and higher surface area.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Files

History

  • Receive Date: 06 May 2021
  • Revise Date: 03 June 2021
  • Accept Date: 06 June 2021

Share

How to cite

Statistics