Removal of Heavy Metal Ions from Industrial Waste Water Using Metallic Nanoparticles as Adsorbents

Water pollution is a major concern for the Government of India and other countries in recent years which arise due to the rapid industrialization. This rapid industrialization is leading to an ever-increasing use of various toxic chemicals. Most of the toxic chemicals contain heavy metals such as As, Cr, Cd, Cu, Zn, Fe, and Ni which are considered as hazardous pollutants. Disposal of these pollutants in the water streams causes serious environmental problems. Adsorption is an economic and comparatively effective process for the removal of heavy metals from wastewater streams. To achieve large surface area for adsorption, small size particle with high porosity are required to be developed. Today's era is focusing towards nanotechnology which is leading towards the use of nano-size materials. The demand for large adsorption capacity can only be met by nanoparticles as adsorbents. To reduce their concentration in drinking water, different Nanosized Metal Oxides (NMOs) were tested as adsorbents. The copper (II) oxide nanoparticles, in the present study, were prepared by precipitation method and characterised by SEM, XRD and FTIR techniques. The as synthesised nanooxide was found to have crystallite size in the range of 10-30 nm and the shape was found to be spherical. Systematic adsorption experiments were undertaken for the following two process parameters i.e., time of contact for different initial concentration and variation of adsorbent dosage to find out the efficiency of copper (II) oxide nanoparticles towards adsorption of zinc. The adsorption capacity as well as removal efficiency of zinc using Cu(II)O were calculated.