Disposable Waste Aluminium Pan Derived Pseudoboehmite Nanoparticles for Concurrent Removal of Fluoride and Arsenate from Aqueous Medium

Abstract

The co‐occurrence of fluoride and arsenate in groundwater is a growing global concern owing to their synergistic adverse effect on human health. Thus, development of materials capable of capturing fluoride and arsenate simultaneously from aqueous medium is of much need. Moreover, it is a matter of great research importance to develop sustainable adsorbents by recycling solid wastes. Keeping this in mind, herein a novel pseudoboehmite nanoparticles (PBN) were synthesized by chemical valorization of disposable waste aluminium pan for simultaneous removal of fluoride and arsenate in aqueous medium. The physicochemical properties of the material were confirmed using analytical techniques such as XRD, BET, FT‐IR, FESEM etc. Batch study confirms the maximum monolayer adsorption of 90.10 mg g−1 and 94.84 mg g−1 of fluoride and arsenate respectively, which shows comparable affinity of the material for both contaminants. The selectivity of the adsorbent towards fluoride and arsenate was further evaluated by set of kinetic experiments in both single‐ion and mixture‐ion environment. The synthesis of pseudoboehmite nanomaterial using disposal waste Al pan and its high efficacy for removal of fluoride and arsenic even in presence of competing anionic environments provide a new direction of waste management for sustainable remediation of groundwater contaminants.