Studies On The Treatment Of Tannery Wastewater Using Low Cost Natural Adsorbents

Abstract

Environmental impact of leather production is considerable Three newlinemajor pollutants namely chromium dye and phenol from the leather process newlineindustries are known to cause major concern to the environmentalists This is newlinedue to the significant impact they have on the environment The currently newlinepracticed treatment methods are unsatisfactory and expensive and often have newlinesecondary pollution problems with sludge Hence there is a need for cost newlineeffective and efficient removal technologies newlineBiosorptive removal of chromium from aqueous solution has been newlinecarried out by employing naturally available low cost materials like seaweed newlineSargassum wightii Turbinaria ornata and Bacillus subtilis microbial newlinebiomass The treatment of protonated biosorbent with aqueous chromium newlinesolution at a pH of 3538 for duration of 6 h gave the maximum uptake of newlineabout 35 28 and 25 mgg for protonated S wightii T ornata and B subtilis newlinerespectively FTIR EDX analysis and flame photometry studies have been newlinecarried out to understand the mechanistic pathway for the removal of newlinechromium by the selected biosorbent Desorption studies carried out indicate newlinethe reuse potential of the biosorbent newlineCalcium alginate beads have been employed as an adsorbent for the newlineremoval of anionic and cationic dyes which are most commonly used in newlineleather industry Maximum adsorption capacity of 275 25 125 and newline5770 mgg has been achieved at an initial concentration of 300 mgL of acid newlinebrown direct blue acid orange and basic black dye respectively employing newline4 gL of calcium alginate Desorption studies have been carried out which newlineindicate the reuse potential of the alginate beads Biosorption of basic yellow newlineand basic blue dye onto the Caulerpa scalpelliformis seaweed has been newlinecarried out A maximum uptake of 27 and 33 mg of cationic yellow and newlinecationic blue dye respectively per gram of seaweed has been observed The newlineaverage effective diffusion coefficients have been determined for both the newlinedyes Negative values of thermodynamic parameters indicate that the sorption newlineprocess is exothermic and spontaneo