Selected Adsorbents for Removal of Contaminants from Wastewater: Towards Engineering Clay Minerals

Abstract

The provision and demand for safe water continues to be a major aspect for governments worldwide as the population continues to grow accompanied by an increase in anthropogenic activities that contaminate water bodies. The common contaminants are the negatively charged ions such as sulfates, positive ions like heavy metals and organic molecules like dyes and phenols. Although, various methods exist for purification of wastewater, the adsorption process is a low cost method that uses readily available adsorbents. Activated carbon, although costly for developing countries, is still the most efficient adsorbent for a variety of substances. However, low cost adsorbents derived from biowaste have being actively explored in water purification. Photocatalytic nanostructured adsorbents not only play a bifunctional role in adsorbing contaminants but also are able to decompose organic pollutants in water using sunlight. The engineering of naturally abundant clay in most developing countries offers an even inexpensive way to clean-up wastewater.

Synthesis and Characterization of 2D Magnesium Oxide Nanoflakes: A Potential Nanomaterial for Effective Phosphate Removal from Wastewater

“…[10][11][12] To remove phosphate from wastewater, various techniques have been developed and studied, including chemical precipitation, adsorption, biological removal, reverse osmosis, membrane ion exchange, and constructed wetlands. [7,[13][14][15][16] But phosphate removal in wastewater based on precipitation processes are the most widespread wastewater treatment technology. [17][18][19] For this procedure, massive amounts of chemicals such as aluminum salts and iron are required.…”

Synthesis and Characterization of Mesoporous Aluminum Silicate and Its Adsorption for Pb (II) Ions and Methylene Blue in Aqueous Solution

“…Among the various methods for wastewater purification, adsorption has been widely used for its advantages such as efficiency and safety as well as economic [ 9 ]. In addition, there is an advantage that various types of adsorbents having various functional groups can be synthesized [ 10 ].…”

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“…Oxygenation of water masses removes phosphates and nitrates by converting them to solid sediments at floor of lake and this improves quality of the water mass (Kennedy et al 2018). The anoxic nature of lake Bunyonyi leads to high nutrient concentrations in water sampled from it.…”