Abstract
Air pollution constitutes the largest among all of the environmental risks. Dust and soot fragments forms components of air particulates, which are released into the air as extremely small particles or liquid droplets. The basis of this research is to characterize toner ink powder and wood soot samples and the detection of metallic pollutants in wood soot (WS) and printer toner ink (PIS) for their physicochemical properties (pH, conductivity, bulk density and moisture content) and instrumental analysis using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR). Two non- destructive analytical techniques; Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometry (ED-XRF) and X-ray Diffraction (XRD) were adopted for heavy metals (elemental) composition and mineralogy respectively. The pH of printer ink and wood soot shows higher pH value which indicates that they are alkaline. Low conductivity values were reported with low moisture, indicating easy fragmentation and spreading. The bulk density values for samples shows that the soot can be easily spread by air current to the environment. The EDS analysis indicates that the soot particles to be composed of primarily impure carbon, thus pointing at potential organic pollutants. The IR spectra show characteristics signals at 749.2 cm-1, 745.5 cm-1, 738.0 cm-1 and 745.5 cm-1 for wood soot and printer ink which correspond to C-H of aromatic group, 1703.4 cm-1, 1699.7 cm-1. The XRF analysis reveals high concentration of Chromium and other toxic metals. The mineralogical components of the soot and printer ink samples revealed the presence of associated minerals. Generally, levels of toxic metal exceed the permissible legislative limit for air samples.
Highlights
According to the World Health organization [1], air pollution constitutes the largest among all of the environmental risks: 3 million annual deaths are associated with outdoor air pollution exposure
We report an insight into the available impure carbon and other pollutants in physicochemically characterized toner powder used as printer ink
Characterization of soot was carried out using the X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry, X- Ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), and Fourier Transform Infra-red (FTIR) Spectroscopic techniques
Summary
According to the World Health organization [1], air pollution constitutes the largest among all of the environmental risks: 3 million annual deaths are associated with outdoor air pollution exposure. In 2012 alone, 11.6 percent of global deaths equivalent to 6.5 million deaths were outdoor air pollution-related
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