Synthesis and Analysis of Impregnation on Activated Carbon in Multiwalled Carbon Nanotube for Cu Adsorption from Wastewater

L Natrayan; P V Arul Kumar; Joshuva Arockia Dhanraj; S Kaliappan; N S Sivakumar; Pravin P Patil; S Sekar; Prabhu Paramasivam

doi:10.1155/2022/7470263

Synthesis and Analysis of Impregnation on Activated Carbon in Multiwalled Carbon Nanotube for Cu Adsorption from Wastewater

Bioinorg Chem Appl. 2022 Jul 31:2022:7470263. doi: 10.1155/2022/7470263. eCollection 2022.

Authors

L Natrayan¹, P V Arul Kumar², Joshuva Arockia Dhanraj³, S Kaliappan⁴, N S Sivakumar⁵, Pravin P Patil⁶, S Sekar⁷, Prabhu Paramasivam⁸

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Saveetha School of Engineering, SIMATS, Chennai 602105, Tamil Nadu, India.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bharath Niketan Engineering College, Aundipatti, Theni 625531, Tamil Nadu, India.
³ Centre for Automation and Robotics (ANRO), Department of Mechatronics Engineering, Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science, Padur, Chennai 603103, India.
⁴ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Velammal Institute of Technology, Chennai 601204, Tamil Nadu, India.
⁵ Department of Mechatronics Engineering, TISHK International University, Erbil, Iraq.
⁶ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Graphic Era Deemed to be University, Bell Road, Clement Town 248002, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India.
⁷ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Rajalakshmi Engineering College, Rajalakshmi Nagar Thandalam, Chennai 602105, Tamil Nadu, India.
⁸ Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering and Technology, Mettu University, Mettu 318, Ethiopia.

Abstract

Industrial wastes contain more toxins that get dissolved in the rivers and lakes, which are means of freshwater reservoirs. The contamination of freshwater leads to various issues for microorganisms and humans. This paper proposes a novel method to remove excess copper from the water. The nanotubes are used as a powder in membrane form to remove the copper from the water. The multiwalled carbon nanotube is widely used as a membrane for filtration. It contains many graphene layers of nm size that easily adsorbs the copper when the water permeates through it. Activated carbon is the earliest and most economical method that also adsorbs copper to a certain extent. This paper proposes the methods of involving the activated carbon in the multiwalled carbon nanotube to improve the adsorption capability of the copper. Here, activated carbon is impregnated on the multiwalled carbon nanotube's defect and imperfect surface areas. It makes more adsorption sites on the surface, increasing the adsorption amount. The same method is applied to Hydroxyl functionalized multiwalled carbon nanotubes. Both the methods showed better results and increased the copper removal. The functionalized method removed 93.82% copper, whereas the nonfunctionalized method removed 80.62% copper from the water.