Development of Adsorptive Membrane for Removal and Reclamation of Chromium from Tannery Wastewater

Abstract

Municipal, business and agricultural activities can generate pollution, which is highly risk to health and may drive serious pollutants to soil, air and water environments if not captured or neutralized before released to the surroundings. Access to the clean water is a global problem for all living organism to sustain their healthy life. Less than 1% of the world’s fresh water is available for human consumptions. Huge quantity of fresh water is consuming in domestic, industrial and agricultural sector i.e 8, 22 and 72% respectively as a result large amount of wastewater contains enormous number of contaminants are dumping religiously into fresh water bodies. The important types of aquatic contaminants are dyes and toxic metal pollutants, which once entered in water and make unsuitable for desired use. Chromium enters environment through mining, various industrial processes and certain geological processes. Its removal is crucial to save plants and aquatic life. Due to its toxic and carcinogenic nature efficient removal technologies and materials are continuously investigated, these techniques are based on distillation or evaporation, coagulation, precipitation, electrolysis, ion change and adsorption. Adsorbents based totally on petro-derived artificial polymers, agri-wastes, fly ashes, and mineral-based total zeolites and goethites also are getting used for removal of chromium. Keratins, predominantly found in wool, human hair and nails, horns and feathers, are cysteine-rich proteins with sturdy mechanical residences, thermal sturdiness and resistance to physicochemical degradation. The aim of this work is to synthesize and characterize a sponge from waste generated form tannery industry (wool) to remove and reclaim chromium. Keratin solution was extracted by using L-Cysteine, Urea under basic condition this solution was dialyzed, lyophilized and crossed linked to form a sponge, the sponge was characterized by using SDS-PAGE, FTIR, SEM, BET, CHNS. Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy is used for adsorption and removal of chromium at concentration 100mg/L. Spongy adsorbent prepared from waste material (leather wool) was successfully prepared and showed tremendous potential for removal of chromium from industrial wastewaters.