Acetylated corn and potato starches as an alternative to the toxic inorganic coagulants/flocculants for wastewater treatment

Abstract

Inorganic coagulants/flocculants have been key in water treatments. However, last years, it has been reported the potential contamination that these give to the environment and serious risks to human health. For that reason, new eco-friendly alternatives have been the subject of exploration and research. This work focused on developing and elaborating a natural flocculant based on corn and potato starches, and its application in industrial wastewater treatments. Starches were isolated from corn and potato, and modified by acetylation method with the aim of improve its solubility. The morphological characterization using SEM identified the effects of acetylation process, the surface of acetylated corn and potato starches presented small erosions. The vibrational characterization via FTIR elucidated the physicochemical changes owing to acetylation. It found the replace of hydroxyl groups of α-glucose by the acetyl ones of amide I. A loss of the crystalline quality of corn starch were identified through structural characterization utilizing DRX. The partial replacement of hydroxyl by acetyl groups due to acetylation induced structural modifications corroborated employing the area under curve of the diffraction patterns. In the case of potato starch, its characteristic hexagonal crystalline structure was favored by the acetylation process, as it exhibited a more defined diffraction pattern. The thermal analysis by means of TGA found three thermal events for the acetylated potato starch and four for the acetylated corn starch. The fourth thermal event in the acetylated potato starch was associated with the ester presence of the added group. The thermal degradation occurred at lower temperatures as mass loss curves showed that acetylation weakened the polymer chains. The pH of zero point charge was 6.52 for the acetylated corn starch and 5.55 for the acetylated potato one, indicating that anionic contaminants be retained at a pH below 6.52 and 5.55 for each case, and the removal of cationic contaminants will favor at pH above these values. The efficiency determination of the modified starch-based flocculant was performed utilizing a jar test at different concentrations to find the optimal concentration of the coagulant/flocculant. Turbidity, color, pH, and electrical conductivity measurements were made before and after the water treatment. These results indicated that both corn and potato starches showed good performance as coagulants/flocculant. The kinetics for adsorption was study using the pseudo-first and pseudo-second order kinetic models, the intra-particle diffusion model, and the Elovich kinetic one. These analyzes identified that the absorption process is governed by chemisorption mechanisms since the pseudo-second order kinetic model was the most accurate for describing the absorption kinetic of both acetylated corn and potato starches according to the R2, SSE, MSE, and RMSE.