Valorization of raw industrial waste and natural materials in the adsorption of heavy metals from wastewater of El Jadida City to be reused in irrigation

Activated carbon as an adsorbent has been widely used to remove toxicity from wastewater, but its high cost causes restrictions in its use. For this reason, this study investigated at lab-scale the raw coal waste, namely fly ash and bottom ash, by being a potential source of pollution to be recycled and used as adsorbents. Besides coal waste, the adsorptiontes reclaim natural adsorbents materials, particularly clay soil and sea sand. The adsorbents were compound in different layers to form a filter Matrix in order to perceive the performance of those adsorbents toward heavy metals removal. The result shows that an efficient simultaneous decrease of heavy metals has taken place due to the proprieties of the filter matrix that interact with wastewater molecules and consequently enhance its quality, the highest removal efficiency of heavy metals achieved 83% for cadmium in the matrix compound of Fly ash, bottom ash and clay. The novelty of this research lies in applying raw materials with no recourse to chemical or biological treatment to the adsorbent materials. The main objective is to reclaim a low cost efficient adsorption process based on raw materials to be applied in a wastewater pretreatment plant where wastewater samples were picked out.