Principal Investigator: Maj Nazmul Karim Mazumder, AEC 

Title: A Study for Removal of heavy metals from aqueous media by bio sorption 

Fund: 4,12,500/- 

Objective: 

There is currently a need for new, innovative and cost-effective methods for the removal of toxic substances from wastewaters. Bio-sorption is an effective and versatile method and can be easily adopted in low cost to remove heavy metals from large amount of industrial wastewaters. The aim of this work is to study the removal of toxic heavy metal ions by suitable biosorbent from synthetic waste water and to offer this biosorbent as local replacement for existing commercial adsorbent materials. Bangladesh is a low-lying country where growth of jute is a satisfactory level. Our objective is to study the easily available jute as a suitable biosorbent to remove heavy metal ions from wastewater. Furthermore, Form the equilibrium data of adsorption; it will be observed the Freundlich and Langmuir's Isotherm. 

Expected outcome: 

The investigation of materials of biological origin as potential metal biosorbents is an aspect of searching for low-cost and easily available adsorbent. Removal of heavy metals from aqueous solutions by non-living, inactive biomass has become a research interest in present studies worldwide. This attempt to purify wastewater is termed as biosorption, biosorbent is the non-living material used in this process. The promising method biosorption is an economically feasible due to having binding abilities of various biological materials. Recently, intensive research is going to remove and recovery of heavy metal ions from waste water using seeds, pods, bark of plants, peels, leaves etc. as biosorbent. At a large scale, economic sorbents can be defined as materials which are abundant in nature or can be found as a by-product or waste from agro-industry, nature and industry, cheap and effective and which normally do not require pre-processing. Recent studies on the removal of heavy metals using numerous types of biomass/biomaterials are reported in literature. Moreover, finding out optimum conditions necessary for efficient removal of these metals from polluted water has become studying area. It is reported that naturally abundant waste biomass contains different types of functional groups on their surface including carboxylate, hydroxyl, amine, amide and phosphate which has affinity for metal sorption. Some microorganisms and lignocellulose biomaterials such as peat moss, raw rice bran, rice straw, coconut husks, waste coffee powder, and waste tea leaves are studied as cost effective biosorbent. Biosorbents are either abundant or wastes from other sectors, this is the important benefit of using biomaterial. Certain types of biomass have more or less selectivity for the absorption of immobilize heavy metals which makes the adsorbent a distinctive from others. Considering these advantages biosorption could be an alternative cost-effective way for the treatment of metal containing wastewaters. 

Duration: 1 year