Study of the Effectiveness of the Removal of Heavy Metals from the Irrigation Canal with Cerium Oxide Nanoparticles Using Neu-trosophic Statistics

Abstract

For the treatment of contamination produced by the variant presence of heavy metals such as lead (Pb), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn) and arsenic (As) in the waters of the Irrigation Canal of the Left Bank of the Mantaro River (CI-MIRM is Spanish), a purification procedure was carried out using different doses of cerium oxide nanoparticles (CeO2) and evaluating their effectiveness in the elimination of these metals in the aforementioned mass of water. As a first step, the water from the CIMIRM canal was characterized using Modular Ultraviolet-Visible Spec-trophotometry techniques with high NIR sensitivity and Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS), to measure the concentrations of heavy metals. Additionally, an analysis of the CeO2 nanoparticles was ca-rried out using techniques to confirm their size and structure. The efficacy of the treatment was determined sta-tistically using a four-stage four-factor factorial design, comparing the differences in the control groups and tar-get groups. The classic statistical test used is the Wilcoxon rank sum test. One of the problems of the simulation of the study carried out in the laboratory is the lack of accuracy because the concentration of heavy metals in the Mantaro River varies during the year. This is why a single crisp value is not enough to study the effectiveness of treatments. One solution to this problem is to use Neutrosophic Statistics, where the data is replaced by Neutro-sophic Numbers or intervals instead of crisp values.