Characteristic and biosorption capacities of plant leaf biosorbents for removal of phosphorous from contaminated water

Abstract

Phosphorus plays an important role in the development of ecosystems, agriculture and industry, but also becomes a pollutant in the water bodies. Human activities produce phosphorous materials into the water resources making them polluted and threatening to the human health and ecosystem. So that it is necessary to remove the phosphorous from synthetic water. There are several methods available for removal of phosphorous from synthetic water among these methods the bio-sorption is simple, economical and environmental friendly methods for removal of phosphorous from water. The plant leaf biosorbents have different biosorption capacities, which varied within each structural group and depend on their pre-treatment as well as the operational conditions. In these research work, six locally available plant leaf biosorbents i.e. neam leaf, javapalm leaf, guava leaf, sapota leaf, custard apple leaf and mango leaf biosorbents are uses for phosphorous removal from water. The order of percentage removal of phosphorous from synthetic water was as follows: Mango leaf ​> ​Java Plum leaf ​≈ ​Sapota leaf ​≈ ​Custard Apple leaf ​> ​Neem leaf ​> ​Guava leaf. The mango leaf biosorbent shows that the best performance for phosphorous removal from synthetic water. The optimum sorption over mango leaf biosorbents was obtained at basic pH is 4–8, dosage is 1.2 ​g, contact time is 60min, temperature is 25 ​°C and agitation speed is 100rpm. The processes can be made economical by regenerating and reusing of the plant leaf biosorbents after removing the phosphorous.