Abstract
Availability of clean drinking water is a great challenge in developing countries like India and the presence of heavy metal ions along with interfering ions present in tap water makes them further very difficult to be removed. Following nanotechnology initiatives, we synthesized TiO2 via sol-gel method and tested it for removal of various heavy metal ions like As, Cd, Cr and Pb; highest adsorption and removal efficiency was obtained for Cd when analysed quantitatively using Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer. Using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), bare TiO2 was observed to have irregular shape while surfactant modified TiO2 had regular spherical morphology. These materials were also tested for anti-bacterial studies against two different pathogenic bacteria i.e. one gram negative strain: Klebsiella pneumoniae and one gram positive strain: Staphylococcus aureu; Thus the overall study opens up numerous possibilities for these materials as adsorbents for removal of heavy metal ions in the presence of competing ions present in tap water together being safe and environmentally benign.
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