Valorization of agricultural and marine waste for fabrication of bio adsorbents sheets

Industrial wastewaters often contain considerable amounts of toxic pollutants that would endanger public health and the environment. In developing countries, these toxins are often discharged into natural ecosystems without previous treatment as it demands high treatment cost which causes long-term detrimental socio-economic impacts. Employing wastewater treatment plants using physical, biological, and chemical methods to clean the wastewater is considered by many nations the answer for the environmental crises. The treated water can be used for targeting the irrigation systems in its majority, as it is biologically acceptable for that specific use, which economizes the use of freshwater sources for municipal use specifically. This study presents a novel method for fabricating an efficient adsorbent sheet for wastewater treatment. The sheets are fabricated by combining sugarcane bagasse pulp as a scaffold with natural activated carbon that are responsible for adsorption. Fava beans and algae biomass are utilized in the production of activated carbon because they are an excellent source of activated carbon. Physical and chemical activation were both used. The prepared sheets are examined on several pollutants (methyl orange, crystal violet dyes, and chromium heavy metals). These pollutants are chosen because they have a negative impact on the environment even at low concentrations. FTIR and SEM are used to characterize the samples. Temperature experiments are performed to identify the adsorption mechanism. To determine the mechanism of adsorption, the chemisorption, intra-particle diffuse, pseudo-first order, and pseudo-second-order kinetic models were used to test the experimental data.