Water scarcity is one of the most important problems facing humanity in various fields such as economics, industry, agriculture, and tourism. This may push people to use low-quality water like industrial-wastewater. The application of some chemical compounds to get rid of heavy metals such as cadmium is an environmentally harmful approach. It is well-known that heavy metals as cadmium may induce harmful problems when present in water and invade to soil, plants and food chain of a human being. In this case, man will be forced to use the low quality water in irrigation. Application of natural materials instead of chemicals to remove cadmium from polluted water is an environmental friendly approach. Attention was drawn in this research work to use some natural minerals as zeolite, bentonite and montmorillonite to adsorb cadmium element from polluted water. Various concentrations of cadmium in solutions 10, 30 and 50 ppm were treated with three different ratios of each mineral; 1, 3 and 5% (W/V). The obtained results proved that increasing the ratio of amendments to 5% increased Cd adsorption from solution particularly at 50ppm Cd. Zeolite obtained the highest ratio of adsorption (47.90 ppm), followed by montmorillonite (44.99 ppm) and the lowest was bentonite (38.97 ppm). Therefore, it can be recommended that addition of zeolite is the most favorable material to remove Cd element from polluted water.

Clay minerals or natural materials such as zeolite play an important role in reducing the potential hazards of toxic elements. They cannot completely destroy heavy metals but can only be transformed from a single phase oxidation or organic compound to another. In this study clay minerals used to reduce the hazardous of lead on aqueous solutions. The used minerals were zeolite, bentonite and montmorillonite. Each mineral was applied at the rates of 1, 3 and 5% (W/V) of waste water. The concentrations used of lead were 60, 120 and 180ppm. The results observed that wherever increased the rate of the clay minerals added to the contaminated liquid has increased the amount adsorbed of lead. Therefore, the highest amount adsorbed of lead was obtained with 5% of soil minerals in all cases. The highest amount of lead adsorbed was obtained with zeolite at the rate of 5% (177 ppm) followed by montmorillonite and bentonite (165 and 145 ppm), respectively. There is a positive relationship with both the amount adsorbed of lead and the rate of soil mineral added to the solution of contaminated. On the other hand, the highest lead removal efficiency was found as about 98.7% with the rate of 5% zeolite mineral. Whereas, the lowest lead removal efficiency was found as about 39% with the rate of 1% bentonite mineral. The arrangement of the soil minerals ability to adsorb lead was followed this order: zeolite > montmorillonite > bentonite. This study suggests that using of available natural materials could be an economic and promising alternative solution in contaminated water to minimize hazards of heavy metals. The clay minerals are suitable materials for heavy metal removal from the industrial waste water.