Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Al-Anbar University, College of Science – Department of Biology - Iraq
2 University of Technology, Environmental Research Center - Iraq
Abstract
Plant wastes have been successfully applied as biosorbent materials of several heavy metal ions from industrial wastewater due to the obvious capability of removing significant quantities of heavy metal ions. In the current work, banana peel powder was constrained by calcium alginate for polymerization and bead formation and subjected to both biosorption and recovery processes of Zn, Cr and Ni ions from untreated wastewater, collected from general state electrical manufacturing company in Baghdad-Iraq, using designed laboratory treatment unite. It has been found that the capacity of immobilized banana peel was significantly higher in bioremoving Zn, Cr and Ni ions than that of calcium alginate where mean biosorption capacities of Zn, Cr and Ni ions was 74.0 ± 2.3 mg/l, 83.0 ± 0.0 mg/l and 71.0 ± 1.8 mg/l respectively while in case of calcium alginate, these values were 25.0 ± 2.2 mg/l for Zn 34.0 ± 1.3 mg/l for Cr and 19.0 ± 0.9 mg/l for Ni. This study has found that biosorption capacities of heavy metal ions by immobilized banana beads, used in laboratory treatment unite, from industrial wastewater was much efficient where this lab designed unite had shown significant capacity of such beads in bioremoving all examined heavy metal ions by giving higher biosorption capacities which were 86.6 % in case of Zn ions and 100% for both Cr and Ni ions. In the recovery of these heavy metal ions from biosorbent immobilized banana beads, it was found that the percentages of recovered metal ions, from these beads used in laboratory unite, were very high ranging from 88.0 % in case of Cr ions to 90.5% for Zn ions while this recovery percentage was 88.7% for Ni ions.
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