Coconut-based biosorbents for water treatment — A review of the recent literature

Published Date
15 October 2010, Vol.160(1):1–15, doi:10.1016/j.cis.2010.06.011

Author

Amit Bhatnagar ^,,

Vítor J.P. Vilar

Cidália M.S. Botelho

Rui A.R. Boaventura

• LSRE — Laboratory of Separation and Reaction Engineering, Departamento de Engenharia Química, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (FEUP), Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal

Available online 5 July 2010.

Abstract

Biosorption is an emerging technique for water treatment utilizing abundantly available biomaterials (especially agricultural wastes). Among several agricultural wastes studied as biosorbents for water treatment, coconut has been of great importance as various parts of this tree (e.g. coir, shell, etc.) have been extensively studied as biosorbents for the removal of diverse type of pollutants from water. Coconut-based agricultural wastes have gained wide attention as effective biosorbents due to low-cost and significant adsorption potential for the removal of various aquatic pollutants. In this review, an extensive list of coconut-based biosorbents from vast literature has been compiled and their adsorption capacities for various aquatic pollutants as available in the literature are presented. Available abundantly, high biosorption capacity, cost-effectiveness and renewability are the important factors making these materials as economical alternatives for water treatment and waste remediation. This paper presents a state of the art review of coconut-based biosorbents used for water pollution control, highlighting and discussing key advancement on the preparation of novel adsorbents utilizing coconut wastes, its major challenges together with the future prospective. It is evident from the literature survey that coconut-based biosorbents have shown good potential for the removal of various aquatic pollutants. However, still there is a need to find out the practical utility of such developed adsorbents on commercial scale, leading to the superior improvement of pollution control and environmental preservation.

Keywords

• Water treatment
• Adsorption
• Coconut wastes
• Biosorbents
• Sorption capacities

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  Corresponding author.

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