(655d) Artificial Intelligence for Organochlorine Pesticides Removal from Aqueous Solutions Using Entrapped Nzvi in Alginate Biopolymer

Chlorinated pesticides (ClP) are commonly found in agricultural drainage and represent the most hazardous pollutants that may adversely affect groundwater quality. Many governments are searching for efficient and cost-effective techniques to reduce their negative effects. Nano technologies especially good electron doner nano particles, such as nano zero valent iron (nZVI) has proved to be effective in ClP degradation and adsorption. In this study, entrapped nZVI in calcium alginate biopolymer was used to remove ClP from its aqueous solutions. The effect of entrapped nZVI in alginate biopolymer on 20 compounds of CIP was studied at different contact time, absorbent dose, pH, stirring rate, and initial ClP concentration. The results indicated that entrapped nZVI in alginate biopolymer is effective in the removal of ClP from aqueous solutions, where a removal efficiency of 55% was achieved for 55.5 µg/L extracted blank solution after 45 min of contact time using dose 40 g/L at pH 7 with fixed stirring rate 100 rpm. The removal efficiency of ClP mixture ranged from 41 to 55% for initial ClP mixture concentration of 400 and 60 µg/L, respectively, at the same environmental conditions. Artificial neural network (ANN) with a structure of 5 – 10 – 1 was used to predict the CIP removal efficiency. The proposed ANN was found to be effective in simulating the performance of entrapped nZVI in calcium alginate for ClP removal, where a high R-value was recorded to be 0.90076, 0.99776, and 0.9327 for training, validation and test plots, respectively.