Jornal de Efeitos e Controle da Poluição
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Removal of Heavy Metals from Industrial Waste Water by Biomass-Based Materials: A Review

Abdel-Raouf MS*, Abdul-Raheim ARM

The recent researches are moving to removal of the agricultural and industrial pollutants from sewage treatment and discuss the possibility of the re-use of this water for agricultural purposes. The chemical contaminants represent the most dangerous types of contaminants found in the water for a many reasons, they are non- biodegradable environmentally and their high toxicity at very low concentrations in addition to the cumulative impact in the bodies of living organisms. The most toxic heavy metals are lead, mercury and chromium. It was estimated that the estimated that global impact of lead is 18-22 million people and of mercury 15 to 19 million people at 2010 according to Blacksmith Institute’s World worst pollution problems. Contamination of the water resources with these elements, leads to polluting of the entire food chain and represents a real threat to the ecosystem. Thus, pure water shortage becomes a crucial problem worldwide. Among the most important research that can contribute to solving the problem of those related to water purification and improving the quality and re-use even in agriculture, for example, instead of wasted and discarded. There are many scientific methods applied in this regard. They include adsorption, precipitation, ion exchange, reverse osmosis, electrochemical treatments, membrane filtration, evaporation, flotation, and oxidation and biosorption processes. Some of these techniques however, have disadvantages such as incomplete metal removal, high reagent and energy requirements and generation of toxic sludge or other waste products. Among all these techniques, the adsorption is economically favorable and technically easy to separate. Instead of using commercial materials researchers have worked on inexpensive materials such as natural and agricultural products. Several works concerned the removal of heavy metals but the present work focuses on the sorbents based on biomass and their efficiency in removal of heavy metals from waste water.