SAWDUST FOR ABSORPTION OF PPb-LEVEL OF HEAVY METALS FROM WATER

Abstract: Heavy metal contamination of drinking water poses serious threat to public health and ecosystems. Chronic exposure to such metal contamination can lead to various health problems including nerve and organ damages. Thus, removal of heavy toxic metals from the contaminated water supply is a critical issue of water quality management. Naturally-occurring resources have been attractive candidates for metal removal because of availability and potential cost-effectiveness. For this reason, the interest has arisen for using materials such as rice husk, yeast biomass, algae, seaweed, and sawdust. Sawdust is an industrial waste but consists of agricultural fibers that contain various organic functional groups. The development of sawdust as potential absorbents has obvious benefits-defined as waste to eliminate waste. We have investigated absorption capacity of sawdust for a series of heavy metals including Cu(II), Ni(II), Zn(II), Pb(II), Cd(II), Cr(III) and Co(II) in ppb level. The results show that removal efficiency range from 60% to 99%. It particularly works very well towards Pb with removal efficiency of 99%. The absorption is correlated well with Langmuir isotherm model. The kinetic and dynamic column properties are examined using lead solution running through sawdust column.