Agricultural Based Low Cost Absorbnts

In the United States and in most of the world food dyes are exceedingly common. In addition to this, they have been brought into question as being dangerous for human and environmental health. From general observation and knowledge about this topic I knew that Red #40 dye (Allura Red AC) is at the height of this controversy. After some initial research, I discovered more information on Azo dyes, their effect on the environment, as well as wastewater treatment used to decontaminate water containing these dyes. This led to my interest on the topic of Electrochemical Advanced Oxidation Processes (EAOPs) as a fairly recent solution to environmental issues regarding contaminants in water. I was curious to see how these processes work, as well as

Although environmental pollution has existed for centuries, it has become a greater issue with the mass production of cars, plastic based products, and the burning of fossil fuels. With the use of hybrid or fuel efficient cars, proper disposal of garbage, and green energy sources people will be able to significantly decrease the amount of environmental pollution being unleashed on earth. The most damaging forms of environmental pollution today include air pollution and ocean pollution. Air pollution has become an increasingly large problem since the 1800’s particularly when inventions such as the car and the burning of fossil fuels for energy started to become more suitable for the tasks at hand. Ocean pollution has been just as hurtful towards the ecosystem as air pollution. Every day people dispose of their trash incorrectly and eventually finds its way into landfills and waterways. Environmental pollution as a whole has affected the planet's health and the organisms living on it greatly.

From the Figure 4.15 and Figure 4.16 it can be seen that there was decrease in color removal from pH9 to pH10 with the maximum color removal efficiency of 83.43% for cationic dye and 71.68% for anionic dye solution. However the trend of increase in color removal with the increase in WTR dose was also observed.

However, adsorption process using bentonite much longer than composites. In addition, the separation of bentonite from the solution requires filter. If using bentonite-Fe3O4 composite, separation without filter. The separation can be using permanent magnet. Treatment of acid mine drainage synthetic using bentonite-Fe3O4 composite (2:1) having final concentration of Fe2+, Cu2+, Zn2+ and Mn2+ were 5.66, 14.09, 15.34 and 21.75 mg/L, respectively. Therefore, it is recommended to use the bentonite-Fe3O4 composite (2:1) to treatment acid mine drainage. The adsorption efficiency for all adsorbent increases in the order Mn2+< Zn2+< Cu2+< Fe2+. The same result in the adsorption process using bentonite blended limestone while adsorption efficiency to the Mn2+ of the smallest compared to other metal ions such as Fe, Co, Cr, Cu, Pb and Zn [22]. Another study that bentonite adsorption affinity order of the metal ions from acid mine drainage was Zn<Ni

Contaminants exist in waste water are either damaging or useful, in both cases they should be extracted whether to discard or to make a use out of it.

Both charcoal and bentonite clay are currently used to remove PAHs from water sources. This experiment was conducted to determine which material was the more effective sequestering agent of PAHs through the use of Procion Red Dye. A spectrometer was used to create a calibration curve to which the absorption of both the charcoal and clay could be compared. Ultimately, the charcoal proved to be the most effective PAH adsorbent.

Nowadays, in adsorptive separation and purification, activated carbon, zeolites, activated alumina, and silica gels, as existing commercial sorbents, have important roles. However, innovative technological developments are needed in the new economy and under the stringent environmental regulations. Despite very promising features of the newly developed nanostructured sorbent materials, basically exploring and systematic investigations are needed on both synthesis methods and adsorption characteristic studies (Deng 2006).

The Water Pollution Acts (1977 and 1990) and the EPA Act 1992 were licenced, which outline the control of discharge of various materials in industrial activities. They enforce industrial companies to use various technologies to remove or recover the metals from wastewater before released to sewer. Most of the companies are unable to treat the waste themselves due to cost effective treatment to remove these metals, therefore they send their wastewater to companies such as RILTA environmental. There are many technologies available for recovery of heavy metals from wastewater such as electrodialysis, ion exchange and reverse osmosis. However these techniques may be expensive and ineffective especially when the metals are present in the wastewater

Currently, the environmental pollution is becoming a significant issue which caused by factories waste and nuclear waste. This pollution has increased around the world since the wide application of nuclear energy in 20th century. The harmful substances in factories wastes like toxic materials can dissolve easily in water and this leads to negative effects on lives. There are many resources of these substances such as persistent organic pollutants (POPs), which contain hydrogen, carbon and chlorine, pesticides, ammonium and dioxins. According to Mole (2015) many researchers found that ammonium and iodide have high levels in many waste water sample in the New York and Arkansas. The most popular process used to remove toxic metals from wastewater

For the 9 Oz Cup, we placed a ¼ teaspoon of SAP into it, then places ½ a cup of water into the 9 Oz Cup and stirred it. Upon stirring the SAP and the water in the 9 Oz Cup we observed that the SAP fully absorbed all of the water in roughly 48 seconds, we then tilted the 9 Oz cup upside down to see if the SAP would stay stuck in the cup, but it did not. After waiting a while

Owing to the standard limits of water, it generates a strong demand to improve the efficiency of existing methods for removing Pb and Zn from the water. Many techniques have been reported for the effective removal of hazardous heavy metals from aqueous solutions such as adsorption, flocculation, coagulation, membrane filtration, electrochemical operations, solvent extraction, bio-sorption, chemical precipitation, ion-exchange, as well as various other processes (6-7). However, most of these techniques have several disadvantages such as production of secondary pollution, high cost, high levels of energy and chemicals needed, and weak treatment operation at low metal concentrations. (8-9). Adsorption is now recognized as an effective and economic method for heavy metal wastewater treatment. The adsorption process offers flexibility in design and operation and in many cases will produce high-quality treated

About 75% of the Earth’s surface is water. The oceans are home to many animals like dolphins, sharks, jellyfish and much more. However, due to the pollution, the sea life is suffering. Ocean, marine, pollution is “the spreading of harmful substances such as oil, plastic, industrial and agricultural waste and chemical particles into the ocean” (Rinkesh 1). The pollution in our oceans is increasing every day; Therefore, it is important we take control and decrease the pollution in the water.

Water pollution has been one of the factors that affect life in the aquatic environments, toxic chemicals as well as human wastes are thrown in the river ways causing unbalanced and unsustainable ecosystem to most organisms. This manner does not only harm other species but also affect the human beings, it has caused diseases and the river banks were abandoned. In this case, the researcher observed that this problem is still continually rising even though there have been a lot of projects concerning the cleanliness and healthiness of the river banks.

The effect of algal biomass on the rate of decolourization is shown in Fig. 8. The algal biomass concentrations used were 0.2 O.D- 1.0 O.D. for an initial dye concentration of 90 ppm for 6 days. The results showed that as the concentration of the algal biomass was increased, there was increase in the percent removal of dye from 88% to 100%. This may be due to an increase in the surface area of the biosorbent, which in turn increases the binding site (Ahmed El Nemr et al. 2005).

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE AWARD OF MASTER OF SCIENCE (ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMISTRY AND POLLUTION CONTROL)