Engineered macroalgal and microalgal adsorbents: Synthesis routes and adsorptive performance on hazardous water contaminants
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-5-2022
Abstract
Colourants, micropollutants and heavy metals are regarded as the most notorious hazardous contaminants found in rivers, oceans and sewage treatment plants, with detrimental impacts on human health and environment. In recent development, algal biomass showed great potential for the synthesis of engineered algal adsorbents suitable for the adsorptive management of various pollutants. This review presents comprehensive investigations on the engineered synthesis routes focusing mainly on mechanical, thermochemical and activation processes to produce algal adsorbents. The adsorptive performances of engineered algal adsorbents are assessed in accordance with different categories of hazardous pollutants as well as in terms of their experimental and modelled adsorption capacities. Due to the unique physicochemical properties of macroalgae and microalgae in their adsorbent forms, the adsorption of hazardous pollutants was found to be highly effective, which involved different mechanisms such as physisorption, chemisorption, ion-exchange, complexation and others depending on the types of pollutants. Overall, both macroalgae and microalgae not only can be tailored into different forms of adsorbents based on the applications, their adsorption capacities are also far more superior compared to the conventional adsorbents.
Keywords
Algal biomass, Liquid adsorption, Water and wastewater treatment, Environmental sustainability, Engineered adsorbent
Divisions
mechanical
Funders
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya,Higher Education Sprout Project, Ministry of Education
Publication Title
Journal of Hazardous Materials
Volume
423
Issue
A
Publisher
Elsevier
Publisher Location
RADARWEG 29, 1043 NX AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS