Plant mediated magnetic nano composite as promising scavenger's radionuclides for the efficient remediation in aqueous medium

Abstract

The present investigation demonstrates the environment friendly plant mediated green synthesis of magnetic bio composite nanoparticles by the chemical co-precipitation of magnetite phase from aqueous medium. Water contaminated with uranium is one of the most serious environmental issues. This study aims to overcome this issue by effectively adsorbing uranium from water at a pH range of 7. Several studies have recently been published throughout the world that demonstrates uranium adsorption from water, although they have all been conducted in acidic media with pH less than 6. This work addressed that issue, and maximal adsorption was achieved at pH 7 using a synthetic magnetic bio composites sorbent derived from tree bark (Amla). The magnetic bio composites were characterized by FTIR, XRD, FE-SEM, and EDX. The computations of the XRD data indicated that magnetic bio composites have nano composite with an average diameter of around 12.1 nm. This has an adsorption capacity of 121.95 mg g^-1. The correlation regression (r²) coefficients obtained for the various isotherm models indicate that the sorption process conformed to the Langmuir and Temkin models. Thermodynamic studies revealed that the sorption process onto plant mediated magnetic bio material is endothermic and spontaneous, which is significant for reuse and recovery of adsorbed material. A desorption test was also performed to regenerate the material by removing the adsorbed uranium (VI) by HCL with an 84.3% success rate.

Keywords: Exclusion; Green synthesis; Magnetic bio material; Nano particle; Uranium.