One of the major concerns of today’s world is water pollution and contamination. Increase in industrial wastewater from textile, food, drug, etc. containing different types of dyes as such makes it more disconcerting. Strongly colored effluents not only create environmental problems, but can also affect the human life as most of them are carcinogenic and mutagenic. Wastewater treatment is the process of converting wastewater – water that is no longer needed or is no longer suitable for use – into bilge water that can be discharged back into the environment. It’s formed by a number of activities including bathing, washing, industrial activity and rainwater runoff. Wastewater is full of contaminants including bacteria, chemicals and other toxins. Its treatment aims at reducing the contaminants to acceptable levels to make the water safe for discharge back into the environment. Physical wastewater treatment plants are mostly used to treat wastewater from industries, factories and manufacturing firms. This is because most of the wastewater from these industries contains chemicals and other toxins that can largely harm the environment.
In the CRLab, we use different new methods for remove pollutants from water media such as hydrogels, membranes, core-shells, magnetic particles, nano photo catalysts, selective adsorbents such as molecularly imprinted polymers.
· Hydrogels:
In the CRLab, attempts were made to synthesize eco-friendly semi-IPN composite hydrogel from cellulose-graft-polyacrylamide and hydroxyapatite and use to removal of reactive blue 2 and pullulan-graft-polyacrylamide semi-IPN porously – drogelasan was synthesized and use as adsorbent of mercury ions.
· Membrane:
In the CRLab, we synthesize a carboxymethyl cellulose-graft poly (acrylic acid) membrane in the presence of silica gel, which acts as an inorganic support and a chitosan-graft-poly (N-allyl maleic acid) hydrogel membrane. The membrane is thermally and mechanically stable, non-toxic and highly resistant to microbial attacks. In another study we used dried onion membrane as a natural adsorbent for removal of MB from aqueous solution.
· Beads (core- shells):
We made novel magnetic adsorbent based on gelatin (Gel), which is entrapped carboxylic acid functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotube (CNT) and embedded magnetic nanoparticles of iron oxide (MNPs).
· Molecularly imprinted polymer magnetic and photocatalyst composite:
We use composites of magnetic and photocatalyst nanoparticles which are trapped in matrix of bio molecularly imprinted polymers to remove organic pollutant such as dyes and drugs from water media.
