Authors: Abhishek Kardam, Kumar Rohit Raj & Shalini Srivastava

Contact: Department of Chemistry, Dayalabagh Educational Institute,

    Dayalbagh Agra- 282 110 (India)

    Email : abhishekkrdm@gmail.com

Abstract

The opportunities and challenges of using nanomaterials in the purification of surface water, groundwater and industrial wastewater streams is a matter of continuing concern. Application of nanoparticles for the removal of heavy metals has come up as an interesting area of research. The variety of inorgano nano structured materials has been explored for remediation but found to be associated with toxicity issues recently. The use of organo nano structured material from pulp or other agricultural waste biomasses provides an important dimension to the environmental treatment technologies. The present piece of work reports the preparation and characterization of nano cellulosic fibers (NCF) from some agricultural wastes. AFM image, SEM and TEM micrograph point out their long rod like elongated nano fibrillated network with high length (micrometer scale) and low diameter (>50 nm). The X-ray diffraction patterns display two well-defined characteristic peaks of cellulose at 2Ө = 12.5o and 2Ө = 22.5o. The average grain size, calculated from the Debye Scherer equation was found to be 6 nm. The nano remediation batch experiments for cadmium and lead metal ions showed that prepared nano cellulosic fibers (0.5 gm) posse’s removal efficiency of 90.89% and 92.62 % for Cd and Pb from initial concentration of 25mg/l compared to macro scale experiments of biomass dose (4gm). The proposed bionanomaterial based remediation is likely to provide new avenues as cost effective, environment friendly, fast pre-treatment step for the decontamination of toxic metals from waste water as green nanotechnology.