Rapid urbanization and excessive agricultural runoff caused nitrate levels in groundwater to exceed permissible limits, making drinking water toxic and unsafe for consumption. Numerous physicochemical and biological treatment methods have been explored to remove nitrate from water; however, adsorption, a surface phenomenon, has a wide range of applications because of its rapid rate of reaction, recyclability, and environmentally friendly synthesis method. In this direction, this study aimed to unravel the role of oxidants in the facile synthesis of a competent zirconium-based adsorbent to remove nitrate from groundwater. The wet oxidative method, a facile chemical synthesis process requires an oxidant, which adds the oxidative functionalities on the surface of the adsorbent, which offers excessive anchorage to the transition metal on the surface of the adsorbent during synthesis. The batch experiments were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the adsorbents in treating nitrate. The maximum adsorption capacity of competent adsorbent was 113.97 mg/g at 300 K, which is considerably high compared to 62.83 mg/g of raw activated carbon and other existing adsorbents. The sorption capacity is reduced with an increase in temperature, which favors adsorption at lower temperatures. Adsorbents were successfully applied to test the groundwater samples showing increased removal efficiency. About 97 % desorption was obtained using 0.5 M NaOH, which facilitates the adsorbents for reuse. The developed adsorbent shows promising effectiveness in removing nitrate and could be used at a large scale.
Read full abstract