Effective removal of mercury, arsenic and lead from aqueous media using Polyaniline-Fe3O4- silver diethyldithiocarbamate nanostructures

Abstract

Abstract In today's world, millions of people are under harmful influences of severely toxic elements (i.e. Hg, As and Pb), all of which lead to irreversible damages to nature and living species' health; thereby its barebone essential to removal these wastes from the ecosystem. Herein, we proposed a highly complex, porous, anti-bacteria, anti-fungal and interconnected sulfur-rich nanostructure based on polyaniline-Fe3O4-silver diethyldithiocarbamate (PANI-F-S) which can remove Hg, As and Pb from aqueous media of about 99% at optimum conditions. Likewise, outcome of Langmiur isotherm showed qm values of about 222.2, 175.4 and 40.3 mg g−1 for Hg, As and Pb absorption onto the PANI-F-S, respectively, which show the highest absorption rate ever achieved for Hg and As at low concentrations within the range of ng or μg. Likewise, outcome of Pesudo-second-order kinetic which showed the highest compatibility with experimental data, revealed qe,exp/qe, cal for Hg, As and Pb about 157.4/163.9, 132.9/138.88 and 108.3/111.1 mg g−1 at concentration of 45 μg mL−1, respectively. The outcome of this study showed that PANI-F-S can efficiently remove Hg, As and Pb from aqueous media and completely eliminate selected gram positive/gram negative bacteria and yeast at 1 mg mL−1 concentration which is vital for reaching the drinking water standard and removing the threat from millions of people worldwide.