Experimental study on removal of chromium by using cow dung ash and eucalyptus leaf ash as low cost adsorbents

Abstract

The presence and persistence of various heavy metals in the day to newlineday environment have been ever increasing as a result of emerging industrial newlineactivities and advanced technological developments. These anthropogenic newlineactivities pose substantial threat to the environment and the public health due to newlineits toxicity, bioaccumulation in the food chain and persistent nature. Industrial newlinewaste water contains high levels of heavy metals that may pollute the water once newlineit is discharged to the nature. These metals include arsenic, chromium, copper, newlinezinc, aluminium, cadmium, lead, iron, nickel, mercury and silver. Among the newlineabove said heavy metals, Chromium (Cr) and Lead (Pb) are the most toxic newlinesubstances and is introduced into the environment through a variety of industrial newlineactivities. The main objective of this thesis is to develop low cost absorption newlinetechnologies to treat particularly Cr+ and Pb+ contaminated waste water and newlinecompares the same with the existing cost intensive treatment techniques. newlineIn this research, a naturally available material like cow dung and newlineeucalyptus leaves are used to develop low cost absorption to remove the newlinepresence of Cr+ and Pb+ metals in waste water. The waste water samples newlinecollected from the industrial units, when tested under laboratory conditions newlineexhibited a fixed pH value and Cr+ or Pb+ concentration. To investigate the newlineefficiency of the proposed low cost absorbent in removing the heavy metals with newlinevarious concentration in the waste water, a aqueous solution with varying Cr+ or newlinePb+ concentration is preferred in this research than the industry collected waste newlinewater samples . The naturally obtained cow dung and eucalyptus leaves were newlinecollected, dried and burnt to ashes were used to remove the Cr+ and Pb+ newlinepresence by adsorbent method her newline newline