Bacteria-doped aerogel preparation for pollutants removal from wastewater

Abstract

Emerging pollutants and large volumes of unused dyes from various industries create serious problems for water bodies. This work introduces a scalable approach to the application on purifying the water by adsorption of various dyes such as Congo Red (CR), Methylene Blue (MB), and some organic pollutants Pyrene and Anthracene from an aqueous solution using bacteria-doped modified aerogel with Sol-gel method of aerogel production focusing on both conventional and complex materials used as adsorbent during the process of removal of soluble waste. Key factors influencing adsorption efficiency, removal percentages such as surface characteristics, pore structure, and surface chemistry with chemical and structural stability of the adsorbents, are discussed. The mechanisms governing the adsorption, including physical, chemical interactions between adsorbates and adsorbents, are examined to provides insight into optimizing treatments processes. The results from the studies show the high removal percentages in most of the experimental runs provide evidence of excellent performance of the adsorbent and the adsorption holds a higher adsorption capacity for PVA-Saw Dust Biochar-immobilized with Pseudomonas aeruginosa micro-organism on cationic, anionic and even organic pollutants. The preparation of aerogel was also done through recycling the waste materials and aerogels gave excellent removal percentage of > 85% along with the toxicology study of bacteria-doped aerogel on the germination of Moong Dal (Vigna radiata) to ensure toxic effects on the environment’s living entities to ensure immobilized aerogels are suitable to implicates in removal process or not. This study shows the potential of bacteria-doped aerogel adsorbents in wastewater treatments along with the possible potential hazard generated during the adsorption.