Arsenic removal from the aqueous system using plant biomass: a bioremedial approach

Abstract

Metal species released into the environment by technological activities tend to persist indefinitely, circulating and eventually accumulating throughout the food chain, thus becoming a serious threat to the environment. Environment pollution by toxic metals occurs globally through military, industrial, and agricultural processes and waste disposal. Bioremediation processes are the target of recent research and are considered low-cost, ecofriendly methods to alleviate the current problems of water decontamination, particularly for remote and rural areas. The present piece of work reports the unexploited sorption properties of the powdered seed of the plant Moringa oleifera (SMOS) for the removal of Arsenic [As(III) and As(V)] from aqueous solutions. Sorption studies, using standard practices, result in the standardization of optimum conditions such as biomass dosages (2.0 g), metal concentrations (25 ppm), contact time (60 min) and volume of the test solutions (200 ml) at pH 7.5, for As(III) and pH 2.5 for As(V). Maximum sorption for As(III) and As(V) species is 60.21 and 85.6%, respectively. Protein/Amino acid-Arsenic interactions are found to play an important role in the biosorption process using plant biomass SMOS.