(215ab) Development of a Low Cost Carbon Materials and Its Functionalisation: for Waste Water Treatment

Carbon derivatives are interesting in current research due to their diverse nature with suitable surface functionality. Owing to that our research focused on the development of low cost hydrophilic carbon materials from waste resources. The physical and chemical property of the designed particles was studied by Raman spectroscopy and electron microscopic investigation. It was observed that the particles are amorphous in nature without any sorts of conjugation or aromatization. In order to improve the adsorption efficiency of such hydrophilic particles, the active functional group with suitable metal ion was chemically immobilized under basic conditions. As our designed material was targeted for environmental detoxification, so for safety view point the toxicity effect of the prepared nanoparticles was investigated using human cell line. From the study it was observed that the designed functionalized materials were nontoxic in nature. The developed functionalized materials were used for the removal of highly toxic elements, such as arsenic from water. In the adsorption experiment we studied both inorganic derivatives (arsenate) and organic derivatives, such as, dimethylarsenic acid (DMA) and monomethyl arsenic acid (MMA). From the adsorption study it was observed that, about 70 to 80% of its final adsorption efficiency for derivatives was achieved within the first 10 minutes time. The effect of pH and different ions on the adsorption behavior was investigated in detail. From this study, it can be seen that for  all cases, at acidic range adsorption was maximum. The Langmuir equation well described the adsorption isotherm; the maximum adsorption capacity towards arsenate, MMA and DMA was found to be 110 mg/g, 79 mg/g and 39 mg/g, respectively at the optimal pH. This result revealed that, the trend for arsenic removal efficiency was followed a trend of as As (V) > MMA > DMA. The effect of humic acid and different coexisting anions during adsorption process was investigated in detail. Various characterization techniques, such as X-ray photoelectron spectroscopic study and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy  analysis was carried on the designed sorbent, before and after adsorption. Hence from the above results it can be concluded that, these novel metal ion immobilized carbon sorbents are efficient in removing arsenate from water and can be an attractive as low cost alternative for the treatment of arsenic contaminated waste water.