Lekan Taofeek Popoola

By Lekan Taofeek Popoola and Alhaji Shehu Grema

Effluents from essential industries have been characterized with heavy metals which are non-biodegradable in nature and also detrimental to health when accumulated in body tissues over long exposure. Adsorption was proved as the best efficient process amongst others to remove these heavy metals from industrial wastewater due to its excellent features. Activated carbons from nanoparticles of agricultural wastes such as pods, shells, husks, peels, shafts and many prepared via calcination process at high temperature can be used as active adsorbent for the industrial wastewater treatment involving heavy metals removal. This chapter discusses heavy metals in industrial wastewater effluents and potential agro wastes from which nanoparticles of activated carbon for industrial wastewater purification could be generated. The transformation of agro wastes nanoparticles into activated carbons via calcination and their applications for heavy metals removal from industrial wastewater via adsorption were examined. Various characterization techniques to study the effects of calcination on structural, morphological and textural properties of activated carbon prepared from agro waste nanoparticles were also discussed. Various isotherm, kinetics, mechanistic and thermodynamics models to investigate the adsorptive nature of the process were presented. Error functions and algorithms for both the linear and non-linear isotherm models regression to affirm their fitness for prediction were presented. Lastly, proposed adsorption mechanisms of heavy metals removal from industrial wastewater using activated carbons from nanoparticles of agro wastes were presented.

Part of the book: Nanopores