Potential use of smartly engineered red mud nanoparticles for removal of arsenate and pathogens from drinking water

Joy Sankar Roy, Gourav Bhattacharya, Deepika Chauhan, Sujit Deshmukh, Ravikant Upadhyay, Richa Priyadarshini, Susanta Sinha Roy

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Abstract

The aluminum industrial waste red mud was successfully utilized as a novel adsorbent for the removal of arsenic (As) ions from water. The arsenate (As (V)) adsorption efficacy of red mud nanoparticles was also investigated. Red mud nanoparticles were prepared by ball milling raw red mud for 10 h, yielding particles’ size of 20 nm on average. The As (V) adsorption on these nanoparticles strongly depended on the size of the nanoparticles. As (V) removal increased from 58 to 83% by reducing the size of red mud particles from 200 to 20 nm. Detail kinetics and transport study confirmed the pseudo-second-order kinetic process which was governed by external mass transport. The Freundlich (and Langmuir) isotherms confirm that the arsenate adsorption capacity changes from 2.28 mg/g (1.84 mg/g) to 2.54 mg/g (1.96 mg/g) for reduction of particles from size 200 nm to 20 nm. Water filter columns made with red mud nanoparticles prepared by ball milling for 10 h showed better filtration performance than the filter packed with raw red mud. Both the hydraulic conductivity and the As (V) removal (8 mm/h and 61% respectively) of influent 1 mg/L As (V) by red mud nanoparticles were greater than the raw red mud (3.2 mm/h and 54%). The modified red mud column filters also exhibited a higher efficiency than the raw red mud filters to remove Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus from the water. Overall, this research shows that nanomaterials derived from aluminum processing waste can be a promising material for water filtration.

Original languageEnglish
Article number796
Journal SN Applied Sciences
Volume2
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished (in print/issue) - 2 Apr 2020

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We are grateful to Shiv Nadar University for providing financial assistance for this project. We thank Arka Dey and Partha Pratim Ray of Jadavpur University for the SEM analysis of the samples. Gourav Bhattacharya acknowledges the Commonwealth Split-site Scholarship, from the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK. We thank Prof. James McLaughlin of University of Ulster for useful discussion on referees comments and helping us in surface area analysis.

Funding Information:
We are grateful to Shiv Nadar University for providing financial assistance for this project. We thank Arka Dey and Partha Pratim Ray of Jadavpur University for the SEM analysis of the samples. Gourav Bhattacharya acknowledges the Commonwealth Split-site Scholarship, from the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK. We thank Prof. James McLaughlin of University of Ulster for useful discussion on referees comments and helping us in surface area analysis.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Keywords

  • Arsenate adsorption
  • E. coli removal
  • Red mud nanoparticles
  • S. aureus removal
  • Water filtration

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