Environmental Remediation of Desalination Plant Outfall Brine Discharge from Heavy Metals and Salinity Using Halloysite Nanoclay

Naif S Aljohani,Bandar A Al-Mur,Yasar N Kavil,Ibrahim I Shabbaj,Radwan K Al-Farawati,Mohamed Abdel Salam

doi:10.3390/w13070969

Abstract

Halloysite (HS) nanoclay was used for the environmental treatment of desalination brine water discharge via the adsorptive removal of selected heavy metals ions; zinc, iron, nickel, and copper, as well as salinity. Different techniques were used for the characterization of the HS nanoclay and it was found that HS nanoclay exists as transparent hollow nanotubes with high surface area. The study showed that most of the heavy metal ions could be removed successfully using the HS nanoclay in a few minutes, at normal conditions. The adsorptive removal of zinc, iron, nickel, and copper, as well as salinity on HS nanoclay was explored kinetically. It was concluded that the pseudo-second-order kinetic model was able to describe the remediation process. In addition, it was found that most of the heavy metals and salinity were removed from the desalination plant outfall brine discharge and the final concentrations were lower than those in the control and standard samples.

Highlights

The results showed that rising the outfall brine discharge sample with solution temperature by HS nanoclay solution was investitemperature was associated with a significant increase in the removal till it reached its gated in a temperature range from 283 K to 323 K
The efficiency ofThe heavy metals and salinity were successfully established by the use of removal Halloysite nanoclay
That and mostsalinity, of the heavy metals and salinity were outfall brine discharge of both heavy metals and the removal operation paremoved from the desalination plant outfall brine discharge and the final concentrations rameters were optimized

Summary

Introduction

Academic Editor: Pei XuReceived: 2 March 2021Accepted: 25 March 2021Published: 31 March 2021Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).Freshwater resource scarcity is a major problem for many countries worldwide. TheUnited Nations (UN) report (Environment Program) has demonstrated that one-third of the world’s population has insufficient freshwater [1]. At the same time, 97.5 percent of the Earth’s water is found in the oceans and seas [2,3]. The salinity range in seawater is

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