Although heavy metals are natural components of the environment, their levels have undergone dramatic increase with increasing population and sophistication in human activities, particularly through industrial activities. These metals cause environmental pollution from several sources, including industrial effluents, lead in petrol, and leaching of metal ions from soil into lakes and rivers. Moreover, excess of these metals can lead to poisoning of drinking water which people of rural communities usually obtain from their surrounding water bodies. Consequently, possible yet low cost techniques required in the treatment of water contaminated with heavy metals have received a great momentum of attention, both due to the health implications these metals pose to consumers of wastewater and the high cost of existing methods employed in water treatment. It is therefore imperative to determine the levels of heavy metals in wastewater when above the permissible levels set by WHO, and reduce their concentrations via the use of a relatively cost-effective approach, especially adsorption technique. We hypothesize that water contaminated with heavy metals such as mercury (Hg), Cadmium (Cd) and Lead (Pb) can be treated using a biofiltration technique to make it safe for human consumption. This study, therefore, seeks to prepare low-cost activated cassava peels powder and compare its effectiveness to raw cassava peels for the removal of Hg, Cd and Pb from wastewater. Currently, the use of raw cassava peels for wastewater treatment is being studied via AAS and IR spectroscopy. The complete results of all the analysis will be presented.

Investigating the effectiveness of raw cassava peels verses activated cassava peels for the removal of mercury, cadmium and lead from wastewater

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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