Bioinspired Materials for Water Purification

ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of electrocoagulation in the removal of Escherichia coli from domestic and urban wastewaters and to determine the effects of the main operational parameters on the process. An electrocoagulation reactor with aluminum and iron electrodes was built for this purpose. A factorial design was applied, where amperage, treatment time, and pH were considered as the factors and E. coli percent removal was the response variable. After 20 min of treatment, >97% removal efficiency was achieved. The highest E. coli removal efficiency achieved was 99.9% at a neutral pH of 7, amperage of 3 A, and treatment time of 60 min. However, the removal efficiency of close to 99% was also achieved at natural wastewater pH of 8.5. The statistical analyses showed that the three tested factors significantly affected the E. coli removal percentage (p < 0.05). These results indicate that electrocoagulation has a high disinfection power in a primary reactor in removing water con[1]taminants as well as simultaneously removing pathogenic microorganisms when compared to biological treatment processes. This represents an additional benefit, because it will considerably reduce the use of chlorine during the final disinfection stage.

ABSTRACT Drinking water is unfortunately becoming a rare luxury on our planet.On the other hand, with a trend of population growth, need for water which is essential to life,is becomingbigger every day.Practical application of nanotechnology in saving water worldwide is in using nanoparticles in detection of water pollution and water purification. This knowledge has importance in medicine and public health, so as in environment safety.Possible application areas of nanotechnology in field of purification and treatment of water are in filtration, catalytic and separation processes, ion exchanging, sensitive pollutant detection,etc.Nanotechnology could be the main solution in future fortreatment of surface water,groundwater, and waste water contaminated by toxic metal ions, organic and inorganic solutes, and microorganisms.

ABSTRACT The present study aims to establish an empirical correlation between biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) of the sewage flowing in Al-Diwaniyah wastewater treatment plant. The strength of the wastewater entering the plant varied from medium to high. High concentrations of BOD5 and COD in the effluent were obtained due to the poor performance of the plant. This was observed from the BOD5 /COD ratios that did not confirm with the typical ratios for the treated sewage. Regression equations for BOD5 and COD removal percentages were suggested which can be used to evaluate rapid effluent assessment after the treatment processes or optimal process control to improve the performance of wastewater treatment plants. The average Biodegradability indices (B.I) of Al-Diwaniyah wastewater plants was found to be 0.69. The equations relating the percentage removal of BOD5(y) with influent BOD5(x), y= 0.044x + 80.66 and the percentage removal of COD (y) with influent COD (x), y= 0.045x + 55.15 were found with high correlation R2 =0.72 and 0.86 respectively. Keywords: BOD5, COD, BOD5/COD ratio, Biodegradability indices, BOD5 and COD correlations

Abstract: In this paper, a review of emerging desalination technologies is presented. Several technologies for desalination of municipal and industrial wastewater have been proposed and evaluated, but only certain technologies have been commercialized or are close to commercialization. This review consists of membrane-based, thermal-based and alternative technologies. Membranes based on incorporation of nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes or graphene-based ones show promise as innovative desalination technologies with superior performance in terms of water permeability and salt rejection. However, only nanocomposite membranes have been commercialized while others are still under fundamental developmental stages. Among the thermal-based technologies, membrane distillation and adsorption desalination show the most promise for enhanced performance with the availability of a waste heat source. Several alternative technologies have also been developed recently; those based on capacitive deionization have shown considerable improvements in their salt removal capacity and feed water recovery. In the same category, microbial desalination cells have been shown to desalinate high salinity water without any external energy source, but to date, scale up of the process has not been methodically evaluated. In this paper, advantages and drawbacks of each technology is discussed along with a comparison of performance, water quality and energy consumption.

Abstract This study reports the competitive adsorption of Ni(II), Cd(II) and Cr(VI) onto sunflower waste biomass carbons, viz. sunflower head carbon and sunflower stem carbon from multi-metal aqueous solution.