Remediation of chlorpyrifos by utilizing waste packaging wood as magnetic biochar

Abstract

The concentration of pesticides in water resources (groundwater and surface water) has reached concerning levels due to the widespread use of pesticides in agricultural activities and their persistent nature. Pesticide contamination poses severe health risks to humans and also to various animal populations. Therefore, innovative approaches to pesticide removal from contaminated water is an essential area of research leading to various chemical‐ and herbal‐based solutions to this problem. The present work demonstrates a novel approach to addressing pesticide contamination by repurposing waste packaging wood for their removal. Wood is one of the major components utilized in packaging which results in a large amount of waste requiring management. In this work, waste packaging wood has been utilized to produce magnetic biochar using pyrolysis in an environmentally friendly way and characterized using various characterization tools such as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy. FTIR results confirmed the characteristic peak at 577 cm−1 of the magnetic group representing biochar. The efficiency of prepared magnetic biochar for the removal of one of the most frequently used organophosphate pesticides (chlorpyrifos) was tested using batch absorption studies; the results are significant, as the prepared magnetic biochar showed more than 85% removal efficiency of chlorpyrifos with (10 mg/10 mL) at optimized conditions (pH 4–5, temperature ~25°C) in 1 h. This work has promising future potential as the magnetic biochar produced from alternative waste wood sources, such as packaging wood, crop stubble (paralli), and hence forth can be extended to address the removal of different pesticides from water. Moreover, this innovation provides the added benefit of avoiding air pollution caused by the burning of waste wood or utilizing landfill space for wood waste.