Large amount of heavy metal pollutants are discharging by industries which are hazardous for environment. Several metallic pollutants like copper (II), nickel (II), lead (II), cadmium (II), and zinc (II) introduced in water can cause serious threat to aquatic environment. Biopolymers are promising candidate for elimination of heavy metals from waste stream. In this chapter, biopolymers based on polysaccharides can be classified into four sub-categories: homopolymers, blends of polysaccharide, copolymers, and functionalized polysaccharide or their composites. Natural biopolymers like alginate,chitosan, cellulose, chitin, and starch contain numerous surface active groups which can act as binding agent to eliminate heavy metals from water. Introduction of secondary functional groups with biopolymers enhances its' mechanical strength which is essential for recyclability of the adsorbent to ensure economical application of biopolymers for industrial scale waste water treatment plant. This chapter provides the in-depth mechanism of heavy metal interactions with the bio-polymeric surface using π-π, dipole-dipole reaction. Furthermore, it can go for hydrogen network, or weak Van-der-walls attraction with the co-polymers, homopolymer, blending of polymers, as well as biopolymer/composite matrix containing negative ions or electron-enriched groups. The concluding part of the chapter illustrates the adsorptive behavior of cations using kinetics and isotherms analysis of the equilibrium system for waste water treatment.

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Presence of various types of micro-pollutants in domestic, industrial and municipal wastewater and landfill leachates are hazardous for living organisms. Thus, industries need to follow stringent requirements for discharging the chemicals in aquatic system. Organic pollutants, including dyes, hormones, phenols, pharmaceuticals, aromatic compounds, dyes, herbicides, pesticides, bromine containing retardants, industrial by-products, domestic products, sterilisers, and antiseptics, are referred as xenobiotic organic compounds (XOCs). Traditional treatment techniques used for organic pollutant removal is not sufficient. The porous carbonaceous structure of granular (GAC) and powdered (PAC) activate carbon can adsorb targeted pollutants from water. The surface area of activated carbon can be varied from (500-1500 m 2 g −1 ). The first part of the chapter illustrated the basic mechanism for adsorptive removal of contaminants over powdered and granular activated carbon (PAC or GAC). Now a days, adsorption onto activated carbon is integrated with biological process for treating industrial effluents. Adsorption integrated with biological treatment of waste water can be carried out using powdered activated carbon membrane bioreactor (PAC-MBR) and biological activated carbon reactor

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