Experimental Study on Heavy Metal Removal from Textile Industrial Wastewater Using Banana Peel and Activated Carbon from Coconut Shell as an Adsorbent

The most important class of pollutants is the effluents (dyes) which are disposed directly to the river from the textile industries. This effluent contains several heavy metals like chromium and copper. Some of the heavy metals which are present in even smaller amount will cause a greater pollution. Disposal of the effluents into the water streams or precious water resource must be avoided. However there are various treatment methods before disposal, which will not be effective in the removal of heavy metals. Adsorption is recognized as an effective and economic method for low concentration heavy metal wastewater treatment. In the adsorption process numerous adsorbents are available. In this study, we used banana peel and activated carbon produced from coconut shell as a low cost adsorbent. A comparative study is done in order to make a comparison between the removal efficiency of chromium by these adsorbent. The dosage of adsorbents is about 10 grams, 15 grams, 20 grams which will create a situation of removing heavy metals. The adsorption process is done at the room temperature for about an hour for each adsorbent. The adsorption process is started with the initial concentration of 10 gram of each adsorbent and then gradually increased based on the removal percentage. At the end 25 gram of dosage is given beyond that which produces no change in the removal of heavy metals.