Abstract
Currently, due to the rapid growth of urbanization and industrialization in developing countries, a large volume of wastewater is produced from industries that contain chemicals generating high environmental risks affecting human health and the economy if not treated properly. Consequently, the development of a sustainable low-cost wastewater treatment approach has attracted more attention of policymakers and scientists. The present review highlights the recent applications of biochar in removing organic and inorganic pollutants present in industrial effluents. The recent modes of preparation, physicochemical properties and adsorption mechanisms of biochar in removing organic and inorganic industrial pollutants are also reviewed comprehensively. Biochar showed high adsorption of industrial dyes up to 80%. It also discusses the recent application and mechanism of biochar-supported photocatalytic materials for the degradation of organic contaminants in wastewater. We reviewed also the possible optimizations (such as the pyrolysis temperature, solution pH) allowing the increase of the adsorption capabilities of biochar leading to organic contaminants removal. Besides, increasing the pyrolysis temperature of the biochar was seen to lead to an increase in its surface area, while it decreases their amount of oxygen-containing functional groups, consequently leading to a decrease in the adsorption of metal (loid) ions present in the medium. Finally, the review suggests that more research should be carried out to optimize the main parameters involved in biochar production and its regeneration methods. Future efforts should be also carried out towards process engineering to improve its adsorption capacity to increase the economic benefits of its implementation.
Highlights
A large amount of wastewater is generated every day from industry, which has a huge effect on the environment (Inyang et al 2012)
The adsorption of organic contaminants using biochar prepared from pine needles at temperatures going from 100 to 700 °C was studied by Chen and Chen (2009)
The review shows that biochar has broad prospects for the removal of typical organic and inorganic pollutants present in industrial wastewater
Summary
A large amount of wastewater is generated every day from industry (coal and steel industry, non-metallic minerals industry and industries for the surface processing of metals like iron picking and electroplating), which has a huge effect on the environment (Inyang et al 2012). Recent research articles showed that technology-based on biochar adsorption is effective in removing heavy metals from wastewater (Inyang et al 2016; Rizwan et al 2016; O’Connor et al 2018; Wei et al 2018) This material has good adsorption capacity for typical industrial wastewater pollutants such as potentially toxic metals, organic pollutants, phosphorus and nitrogen compounds. The adsorption mechanism of biochar to remove organic and inorganic pollutants can be based on electrostatic interaction, ion exchange, pore filling and precipitation This depends upon the physiochemical characteristics of biochar such as dosage, pyrolysis temperature, pH of the medium/ effluent (Pellera et al 2012; Ahmad et al 2014; Lam et al 2016; Mubarak et al 2016; Vithanage et al 2016; Younis et al 2016; Rehman et al 2017; Qayyum et al 2017). The content of gaseous products increases by the increase of the temperature
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