Synthesis, Characterization and Application of Novel Nano-adsorbents for the Treatment of

Increased industrial, agricultural and domestic activities have resulted in adding large amount of wastewater, containing a number of toxic pollutants, to the available fresh water resources. The presence of toxic pollutants adversely affects human and animal life and cause environmental pollution. This realization has placed pollution control and management, the most challenging task for researchers and practitioners worldwide. In Pakistan surface and ground water are mainly polluted from the byproducts of various industries including textile, metal, dying, chemicals, pharmaceutical, leather, pesticides, sugar processing and others. Industrial effluents and municipal water ultimately reaches to the rivers carried by drains and canals thus worsen the water pollution. It is reported that 60 % population of developing counties have no access to safe drinking water. The present research is an attempt to remove nitrates and phenols pollutants present in the aqueous media with the synthesized novel adsorbents. The aqueous samples include industrial effluents collected from 09 different industries of the Punjab. Each composite aqueous sample was characterized to determine the background concentration of nitrates and phenols. Nanoparticles of alumina were synthesized using different standardized methods with slight modifications to present novel materials for the removal of pollutants. In addition, meso alumina procured from Merck was applied as adsorbent for comparison with synthesized alumina particles. The results indicated higher concentrations of Nitrates and Phenols in the aqueous samples. The characterization also highlights that Tanneries can be regarded as the most polluted industry among other industrial units. The selected meso and synthesized alumina materials were applied as adsorbents in batch experiments. For this purpose, twelve series of batch experiment was conducted at variables of contact time, pH o