Informatics Publishing Limited

A. Herrera-Barros ¹, C. Tejada-Tovar ², A. Villabona-Ortíz ², A. D. Gonzalez-Delgado ¹, Y. Villabona- Duran ²

Affiliations
1 Chemical Engineering Department, Nanomaterials and Computer Aided Process Engineering Research Group (NIPAC), University of Cartagena, Cartagena, Bolívar, CO
2 Chemical Engineering Department, Process Design and Biomass Utilization Research Group (IDAB), University of Cartagena, Cartagena, Bolívar, CO

Abstract

Background: The presence of toxic pollutants in water sources has become a major issue worldwide and different technologies have been applied for water treatment such as chemical precipitation, ionic interchange, adsorption, membrane filtration, flocculation, among others. In the last decades, nanotechnology has gain attention in the development of nanomaterials for removing these pollutants. Objectives: In this work, Hg (II) and Cr (II) adsorption process was studied using residual biomass (orange peels, corn cob and oil palm bagasse) modified with Al2O3 nanoparticles. Methods/ Analysis: The biomasses before and after modification were characterized by FT-IR analysis in order to determine main functional groups. In addition, XRD technique was used to calculate average crystallite size and identify both γ and δ alumina. Findings: It was found that suitable conditions for further experiments were particle size of 0.355 mm and pH values of 2 and 6 for Cr (VI) and Hg (II), respectively. For Hg (II) ions, the highest removal yields were 70.89, 34.18 and 54.9 % using OPB-Al₂O₃, CC-Al₂O₃ and OP-Al₂O₃, respectively. For Cr (VI) ions, these values were 48.2, 39.8 and 30.5 % using OPB-Al₂O₃, CC-Al₂O₃ and OP-Al₂O₃, respectively. Novelty/Improvement: These results suggested that OPB-Al₂O₃ can be successfully used in removing Cr (VI) and Hg (II) with higher efficiency than the others synthesized biosorbents.

Full Text