Ahelee Sarkar
Roll no. 24
BANANA PEELS FOUND TO BE VERY EFFECTIVE IN PURIFYING WATER!
Banana Peel Applied to the Solid Phase Extraction of Copper and Lead from River Water: Preconcentration of Metal Ions with a Fruit Waste
An interesting discovery has been recently made by a group of researchers from Brazil's Instituto de Biociencias de Botucatu at the Universidade Estadual Paulista led by Gustavo Castro. According to their report published in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research journal, minced banana peel can be used as a water purification material. In fact it considerably outperforms many other materials used to clean water.
Researchers discovered that waste from industrial, mining and agricultural activities can have a serious negative impact on the condition of waterways. Components like lead and copper negatively influence health and the environment and ways of removing them can be rather costly and even destructive in the long run.
This is why a lot of scientist attempted to discovered a chemical-free solution that could solve the problem. It is worth mentioning that previously researchers used coconut fibre and peanut shells to purify water, removing toxins from it.
The latest discovery shows that minced banana peel has the potential of removing lead and copper from waterways quickly and effectively.The test that the research group carried out showed that a banana skin water treatment apparatus can be used to purify water up to 11 times.
This article reports on an investigation into the ability of minced banana peel to extract lead and copper ions from water and the parameters involved in this process. The kinetics of copper and lead uptake reached equilibrium in 10 min and the extraction of metals ions was favorable above pH 3. The medium was characterized by FTIR, which showed absorption bands of carboxylic and amine groups at 1730 and 889 cm1, respectively. The adsorption isotherm fitted by Langmuir’s model showed maximum adsorption capacities of 0.33 and 0.20 mmol g−1 (or 20.97 and 41.44 mg g−1) for Cu(II) and Pb(II), respectively. Minced banana peel was applied in the preconcentration system and showed approximately 20-fold enrichment factor and the column was reused for 11 cycles without loss in the percentage of recovery. The proposed method was applied in the determination of Cu(II) and Pb(II) in a sample of raw river water and was validated by comparison with a standard reference material.
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ReplyDeleteThis could be a great method to purify water without the use of any further synthetic chemical. Though this method would not be of much help to clean our Ganga,but certainly we can give it a try. Maybe even think of new new strategy that would clear all the other industrial as well as human and animal wastes too. This is just the beginning and of course,to cover a distance of 100 miles a step forward is increasingly necessary.I am sure,the young eager scientists of the upcoming generation would definitely seek out new strategies that would fit accordingly and benefit us all and our mother nature,as well.
ReplyDelete- Kyamelia Mandal (roll no. 04)
yes!!this is really interesting..this method is ecofriendly method topurify water.this is more relevant as this can be reused upto 11 cycles.
ReplyDeletesanchari paul. 11b
Yes.... Its really gud.... I wish the scientists think about it and work on it fast so that we can live in a clean and hygienic society....
ReplyDeleteLovely