USE OF BIOCHAR FOR INORGANIC CONTAMINANTS REMEDIATION

Anthropogenic activities alter the natural flow of materials and introduce novel chemicals into the environment thereby causing serious soil and water pollution Indeed, many industries produce aqueous effluents containing toxic substances, especially heavy metals The presence of these contaminants in the environment is a great issue because of their toxicity and bioaccumulation ability which affect human life and the environment Various physicochemical and biological techniques have been used to remove the heavy metals from waste waters, including chemical precipitation, ion exchange, chemical coagulation, electrolytic methods, membrane processes, and adsorption Biochar is a carbonaceous material obtained from the pyrolysis of plant and animal biomasses Due to its high porosity, it could be effectively used as a remediation tool to retain inorganic contaminants A comparative study between the removal efficiencies of Cu (II) and Ni (II) from synthetic wastewater by using adsorption onto biochars produced from chicken manure, conifers and poplar wood wastes was conducted to assess their ability in the removal of heavy metal from aqueous solutions The results showed that chicken manure biochar proved to have the highest removal efficiencies (up to 90% of removal) for both Cu (II) and Ni (II) ions The sorption ability of chicken manure biochars that underwent various degrees of carbonization (chars formed by pyrolysis at 350 and 500°C) was also investigated Higher pyrolysis temperatures lead to the disappearance of certain surface functional groups (e g , aliphatic) and the formation of others (e g , aromatic) These differences leads to a different adsorption behavior