Practical Homemade Copper Filter by Banana Peels, Sand and Charcoal for Wastewater Treatment

Abstract

Copper ions are commonly contaminated in the effluents from many electronic factory. In copper filtration, most filter types are usually expensive and causes toxic residues and creates another health and environmental problem. Therefore, this research has been developed a copper filtration approach based on homemade non-hazardous residues of banana peels, unmeshed sand, and charcoal. The results showed that baked, minced banana peels media could absorb synthetic water having copper ion at 50 ppm with filtration efficiency of 70% within 2 hr. Baked minced banana peels in combination with sand and charcoal could adsorb Copper (II) at 50 mg/ mL more than 80%. However, the swollen structure of banana peels during copper (II) filtration caused limit filtration efficiency to 4-5 hour extraction period. The tentative wastewater treatment application is, therefore, the use of bio-adsorbent for effective adsorption of toxic heavy metals from effluents open discarded from agricultural wastes in the environment.