Characterization and Use of Agroindustrial by-Products in the Removal of Metal Ions in Aqueous Solution

Abstract

Contamination of surface waters with heavy metals causes concern due to their toxicity, resistance to degradation and adverse effects on human health and aquatic biota. On the other hand, the search for uses and applications of agroindustrial waste has become a priority in the environmental agenda, due to the large volumes generated. Thus, adsorption is presented as an alternative to using these wastes in the treatment of water contaminated with metal ions. The objective of this work was the study of the use and characterisation of adsorbents of an agroindustrial source (palm bagasse) and by-products of the process of obtaining starch (yam and plantain), for its use in the removal of Cr (VI) and Ni (II) ions in a batch system. The adsorption tests were carried out at an initial concentration of 100 ppm ions at 200 rpm using 1 g of material in 100 mL of solution. The adsorbents were characterised by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy, micro-elemental analysis, physicochemical analysis and surface area measurement by Brunauer-Emmett-Teller analysis. From the results, it is established that the palm bagasse has a pore volume twice higher than the other biomaterials. It was determined by the adsorption results, for Cr (VI), were superior in all materials to those obtained for Ni (II). The three agroindustrial residues studied presented high percentages of adsorption efficiency, above 70%, with palm bagasse standing out with an adsorption efficiency of 92%; Therefore, the use of these three biomasses is recommended to treat water contaminated with Cr (VI).

Recent trends in Ni(II) sorption from aqueous solutions using natural materials

“…It should also be taken into account that natural materials, after the sorption process, may cause the release of soluble organic compounds contained in plant materials (Rico et al 2018;Tapia et al 2018), and thus increase the values of some of the outflowing wastewater's parameters. Candelaria et al (2019) used agroindustrial byproducts to remove nickel and chromium ions. The agroindustrial source palm bagasse and by-products of the process of obtaining starch (yam and plantain) had high adsorption efficiency of well over 70%.…”

“…Lemna gibba (Morales-Barrera et al 2020), Azolla filiculoides (Naghipour et al 2018), Pistia stratiotes or Nymphaea lotus (Ugya et al 2019)) and various plant fragments in their studies. For nickel sorption, both plant parts such as bark (Cancelo-Gonza ´lez et al 2017;Akar et al 2019) or cones (Oguz 2020), and more fragmented parts such as fibers (Boudaoud et al 2017), bagasse (Rico et al 2018;Candelaria et al 2019) and sawdust (Richard et al 2020) were used. Researchers have also used algae (Vetrivel et al 2017;Kipigroch 2018; El-Naggar and Rabei 2020) and fruits (Pertile et al 2020) including their seeds (Aravind et al 2017), shells (Cruz-Lopes et al 2021 or peels (Priyantha and Kotabewatta 2019) to remove metals from aqueous solutions.…”

“…The development of biodegradable adsorbents that are low-cost, abundant in nature, and available in large quantities is currently an area of extensive research due to their potential applications in biosorption processes for the removal of nickel (II) ions from water and wastewater. Among them, natural materials like bacteria (Mardiyono et al 2019), fungi biomass (Silah and Gu ¨l 2017), macroalgae (Eka Putri 2019), peat (Charazin ´ska et al 2021), old newspaper fibers (Ossman et al 2016), lemon peel waste (Villen-Guzman et al 2021), peanut hulls (Tapia et al 2018), sugarcane (Rico et al 2018) and palm bagasse (Candelaria et al 2019), surface-engineered yeast (Li et al 2019) have been developed and tested for the removal of nickel metal ions.…”