New Generation Adsorbents for Water

Treatment

Muhammad Usama
CM 2336
Introduction
• Some heavy metals are notorious water pollutants with high toxicity
and carcinogenicity.
• Arsenic, Cadmium, Cobalt, Lead, Chromium, Selenium etc. have
serious toxicities.
• Mainly the sources of these metals are industries like Paints,
Fertilizers, Pharmaceuticals and Detergents.
• Many Organic pollutants have also been found in water resources such
as Dyes, Pesticides, Hydrocarbons and Biological pollutants.

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Introduction
• There are many methods for water treatment like Screening, Filtration,
Centrifugation, Precipitation, Evaporation, Distillation, Reverse
Osmosis and Adsorption etc.
• In order to choose best cost effectiveness method, Adsorption is at the
top.

Ion Reverse Solvent

Adsorption Evaporation
Exchange Osmosis Extraction

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Adsorption
• It is a surface phenomenon due to Physical forces, but sometimes
weak chemical bonding also participate in adsorption.
• Previously Activated Carbon was used for the removal of different
pollutants from water, but now Nano size adsorbents have been
prepared for the removal of water pollutants.
• For the preparation, many methods like laser pyrolysis, flame
synthesis, thermal plasma synthesis and low temperature reactive are
used.
• Nano Particles are characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD),
scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron
microscopy (TEM).
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Removal of Pollutants from Water
• For the removal Inorganic pollutants like Arsenic, Cadmium,
Chromium, or Cobalt, nanoparticles are used as Adsorbent.
• Like Kaganeite (β-FeOOH) is used as adsorbate for removal of
Arsenic and Aluminum Silicon particles for Cadmium.
• For Organic pollutants, nanoparticles of aluminum, iron and titanium
oxides are effective for adsorption.
• Biological pollutants are also removed from nano particle adsorption.
• Virus can be removed by adsorption on iron oxide nanoparticles.

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Regeneration of Nanoparticles
• It varies from adsorbent to adsorbent and type of adsorbate.
• Like for the regeneration for iron oxide nanoparticles after adsorption
of Pd(II) and Pt(IV), sodium bisulfate and nitric acid is used.
• For the regeneration of ferric oxide nanoparticles after adsorption of
phosphate is achieved by 4%NaOH and 2% NaCl solutions.
• After regeneration nanoparticles can be reused for adsorption, and the
regenerated metal ions can be recycled as well for manufacturing of
various commodities.

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Future research plans
• Treatment of water from metal ions or biological pollutants using
nanoparticles adsorption technique.
• Type of adsorbent and adsorbate is to be decided.
• For now I have started experimentation on adsorption of dye using
activated carbon, for practical learning.

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Thank
You
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