Study on removal of heavy metals using potential low cost adsorbents red mud and modified form of red mud

Abstract

The population growth rate is being increased day by day as well increasing the needs of people, which leads to the development of a lot of new industries. Solid wastes from the industries make serious environment issues.Red mud is one of the solid wastes obtained from aluminum industry. Alkaline nature and huge generation of red mud create disposal problems. At present, red mud dumped in excavates and pumped into sea create serious environment problems. Surface water, ground water, sea water and atmospheric air are highly polluted due to red mud disposal. Living and non-living things on the surrounding area were extremely affected. Several newlineindustrial products are being manufactured with the help of toxic heavy metals and the discharges of effluents from such industries without appropriate treatment create worse impacts on environment. Hence, there is a need to reduce the heavy metal contamination. By using the solid waste as a low cost adsorbent for heavy metal removal, both solid waste disposal andheavy metal contamination problem can be rectified. The present research work focused on the removal of heavy metals such as lead (II), arsenic (III) and chromium (VI) using the solid waste red mud and its modified form of red mud. To increase the adsorption capacity of red mud it was treated with HCl and coated with iron oxide. The three types of adsorbent namely; red mud, acid treated activated red mud and iron oxide coated acid treated activated red mud were used for the adsorption studies. The characterization studies of the adsorbents were performed. newline newline