Scavenge of Hazardous Metal Ions Using Decorated Nanometal on Carbon Nanomaterial Synthesized from Cotton

Abstract

Eradicating hazardous materials using carbon nanomaterials (CNMs) is a cutting-edge approach in environmental remediation. The study involves procurement of plant material cotton as a feasible precursor for the synthesis of carbon materials which is further activated by using alkali solution. Activated carbon was decorated with copper nanoparticles to create a copper decorated CNMs. The effective adsorption of Cd+2 and As+3 is 85% to 90% at pH 6 and 7 respectively. Thus, this recently developed cost-effective novel adsorbent CNMs can be used to mitigate the Cd+2 and As+3 even at a very low concentration level. The prepared adsorbent was characterized by various analytical techniques such as SEM, TEM, Raman and XRD. The specific surface area and pore volume was confirmed by BET.

Introduction

I. INTRODUCTION

In many countries, due to urbanization and industrialization various organic and inorganic pollutants are discharged into the environment from different sources like metal plating, glass production industries, mining operations, pulp industries, petrochemical fertilizers, refining ores, manufacturing of paints, leather tanning, etc. (Argun et.al., 2007, Atieh et.al., 2011 and Varma et.al., 2010). These pollutants are hazardous as well as carcinogenic in nature which will affect not only human-life but also other living species existing in the ecosystem.

The pollutants include many heavy metal ions which are resistant to biodegradation. Various technologies are available in the present scenario which are either expensive or non-effective for solving all types of pollutants present in waterbodies. (Anirudhan and Sreekumar, 2011)

Arsenic poisoning can cause severe health effects in humans, even when exposure occurs at low concentrations. (Carneiro et.al., 2015). The toxicity of arsenic ranges from vomiting to skin cancer to death. (Gupta et.al., 2010).

Cadmium leads to cancer and organ toxicity such as skeletal, urinary, reproductive, cardiovascular, central and peripheral nervous; in addition, it decreases bone density and causes respiratory disorder. (Rahimzadeh et.al., 2017). It is imperative to prevent such toxic metals from entering the water bodies.

There are numerous methods and technologies available for the removal of heavy metal ions viz. ion exchange, chemical precipitation, chemical oxidation, reduction, reverse osmosis, co-agulation-flocculation, ultrafiltration, flotation, membrane filtration, electrodialysis, electrochemical methods and adsorption. Among the following methods, adsorption is an effective treatment method. (Roy et.al., 2013). It is fascinating to account that most of the work carried out so far has used activated carbon nanomaterials (CNMs) with or without metal nano particle decoration for removal of hazardous ions. The CNMs derived from petroleum-based products are extortionate and, in most cases, the CNMs are prepared from petroleum products, which are on the verge of extinction. The innovation, forthcoming development and challenges of cost-effective are taken into consideration for the synthesis of CNMs and adsorption of toxic metal ions. In recent years, many researchers have developed CNMs from durian shell (Chandra et.al., 2009), marigold straw (Qin et.al., 2014), rice husk (Ratan et.al., 2018), cocoa pods (Tiegam et.al., 2021), pineapple leaf (Latif et.al., 2021), etc. However, the precursor cotton contains excess of cellulose is good enough for adsorption capacity (Sharon et.al., 2011, Mukherjee et.al., 2013, Tamilselvi and Asaithambi., 2015).  The privilege of the precursor is its renewability, marvelous yield with short span of time and easily available on earth.

The aim of the present work is to synthesize CNMs using plant-based precursor (cotton) impregnated with copper nanometal leading to enhancement of adsorption capacity of hazardous metals Cd+2 and As+3. BET analysis confirmed material’s extensive specific surface area, further supporting its suitability as a strong adsorbate for adsorption.

II. EXPERIMENTAL TECHNIQUES

Double distilled water is employed both as a solvent and for all dilution purposes, along with this all the chemicals used for the study are of analytical grade reagent.

A. Synthesis of Cu-doped CNMs

The work involves pyrolysis of cotton fiber at 700°C in the presence of inert atmosphere to synthesize carbon material. Activation of carbon material using various alkali solution followed by doping of copper metal is done. Further, annealing of prepared material is carried out at 750°C in an atmosphere of CO2. The synthesized CNMs is highly porous and has substantially high surface area due to doping of metal which will be an excellent candidate for adsorption of hazardous metal ions.

B. Removal of Hazardous Metal Ions

Initially 1000ppm stock solution of Cd+2 and As+3 was prepared by using reagent CdSO4.H2O and As2O3 respectively. Cd+2 solution was prepared by dissolving in 2N HNO3 whereas As+3 was dissolved in 10% NaOH solution and PH was adjusted using 1N H2SO4. Further in the range of 10-15ppm both the solution was prepared from stock solution.

The experiment of the adsorption was carried out at room temperature. The dosage of 0.1g Cu-doped CNM is added to 10ml of solution in the conical flask. The analyte was kept in a digitally controlled shaker machine for half an hour and the rate of agitation was maintained at 120 shake per minute. The other parameter like pH was adjusted by using hexamine powder and 1N H2SO4 for Cd+2 and As+3 respectively. The analyte was filtered and the concentration of the filtrate was determined by using ICP-AES. (ARCOS, Simultaneous ICP Spectrometer of SPECTRO Analytical Instrument GmbH Germany, was used for analysis. The RF Generator: Maximum of 1.6 KW, 27.12 MHz and the spectrometer wavelength range 130-770nm with the resolution of 9 picometer).

The amount of metal ions adsorbed was calculated by the difference in the initial (Ci) and the final (Cf) concentration of analyte. (Hawari, 2006) The percentage of adsorption was calculated by using following relationship.

III. RESULT AND DISCUSSION

A.  pH-Dependent Metal Ion Adsorption by CNMs

Figure 1 reveals dynamic trends in the adsorption behaviour of metal ions in response to changes in pH. As the pH increases both As+3 and Cd+2 generally experience an upward trend in adsorption but the adsorption rate decreases towards the higher pH range.

The highest adsorption values are observed at pH 6 for Cd+2 around 88% because at low pH the adsorbent is saturated with hydrogen ions which discourages the removal of Cd+2 ions. (Osasona et.al., 2017). There is negligible change from pH 6 to 8 afterwards it decreases. (Gour et.al., 2018). The pH range 6 to 9, As+3 is mostly present as neutral arsenious acid (H3As3O3), and its adsorption is favorable when the surface is close to neutral. (Carneiro et.al., 2015).

IV. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The authors express sincere gratitude to SAIF (IIT Bombay), ICON LAB (Mumbai) and SMART Instrument LAB (Mumbai) for carrying out the analysis and characterization of synthesized CNMs.

Conclusion

In this investigation, the CNMs with excellent surface characteristic were conveniently and economically synthesized using precursor cotton. Impregnation of copper nano particles enhance the adsorbing capacity of hazardous metal ions. Finally, the characterization of synthesized CNMs was done using SEM, HR-TEM, XRD, RAMAN confirms the presence of crystalline and amorphous carbons whereas BET shows an excellent adsorbent material. The result also confirms 88 % to 92 % adsorption of Cd+2 and As+3 metal ions by using low dosage of synthesized CNMs within a short span of time. Hence it can be concluded that the CNMs obtained from cotton is a marvelous candidate for removal of arsenic and cadmium metal ions from the effluents.

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Copyright

Copyright © 2023 Bholanath T. Mukherjee, Pooja O. Jayswal, Arati D. Nandapure. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.