Heavy metal removal using modified red clay

초록

The heavy metals, like As, Hg, Pb, Cd, Cu, etc., are known as toxic materials. Their contamination in drinking water leads to serious negative effect on human health. So, we need better water treatment technology in order to remove contaminations of the heavy metals. Several technology and materials are used for this purpose. The technologies like ion exchange process, membrane separation method have shown high removal effectiveness but their running and maintenance are costly. The materials like activated carbon, zeolite has cost-effective but low removal efficiency. Recent research has focused on the clay absorption [1] due to easily availability of source from the surroundings such as mud flat, flower garden. The clay has low cost, handiness, ability of strong absorption, and large surface area to absorbing heavy metals with zero pollution. In this study we also used red clay and modified it to enhance its property of absorption. We modified red clay by calcining and analyzed its chemical composition. The Raman spectroscopy is used for analyzing the chemical compositions and also analyzed the removal efficiency of quantities and concentration of heavy metals. The Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) will also be utilized to support our results. The effects of pH and initial chemical oxygen demand (COD) value were investigated. COD, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), suspended solid (SS), and inductively coupled plasma (ICP) were the parameters estimated to evaluate the water treatment process. Comparison of red clay of before and after processing confirmed that the modification in red clay was reason for the removal of target compound.