Agricultural Waste Materials as a Potential Adsorbent for Removal of Heavy Metals in Waste Water

The world has suffered a major threat in recent years as a result of discharge of heavy metals into the environment due to industrial development and suburbanization. Adsorptions of these aforementioned metals were studied by Atomic Adsorption Spectrophotometry (AAS) and it showed that adsorption was extreme at the 100th minute. These elements pollute the water resources, contaminate of the food chain and pose a menace to the ecosystem, leading to pure water shortage. There are countless technical approaches adopted in the elimination of these metals from waste water. They include adsorption, precipitation, ion exchange, reverse osmosis, electrochemical treatments, membrane filtration, evaporation, flotation, and oxidation and bio sorption processes, but most of these techniques have detriments such as inadequate metal elimination, great reagent and energy necessities and generation of toxic sludge or other waste products. As a substitute for using commercial constituents, the research used agricultural wastes (banana peels and peanut shells) as adsorbent. The results showed that banana peels and peanut shells can be used for the removal of heavy metals with a concentration range of 10-50 mg/100cm3. Also, when the contact time was 100 minutes it showed maximum adsorption of lead and manganese for both adsorbents. It was found that the percentage removal of heavy metals was dependent on the adsorbent and adsorbent concentration.