Abstract:
Water contamination by heavy metals is one of the environment's challenges in the twentyfirst century. Various ways for removing heavy metal from water have been actively
researched. Iron oxide nanoparticles are a well-known adsorbent in water treatment. They
are more desirable for water purification due to their low-cost, simple manufacturing, and
excellent heavy metal removal capacity. Iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) were manufactured through the co-precipitation method as it the simplest approach in synthesizing nanoparticles in laboratory. It includes the use of a base in a solvent to precipitate metal in the form of hydroxide from a salt precursor. Synthesis of iron oxide nanoparticles was done by slowly adding the basic NaOH solution to the acidic FeCl3 solution. Maximum precipitation of the solution was achieved at a pH of 12. 1.5 ml of the solution was filled in the Eppendorf tubes and centrifuged at 1350 rpm for 25 min. The iron oxide pellets were collected in a petri dish and heated at 70 °C for 30 mins to remove the moisture content. The dried iron oxide pellets were finely grinded in a mortar and pestle to obtain a homogenous powder. Synthetic water containing Pb, and Ni was prepared in the laboratory. Synthetic water had a concentration of 150ppm, 250ppm and 350 ppm. The synthetic water containing heavy metals was treated with the synthesized nanoparticles. Treatment was done in three batches with the changing parameters of concentration of heavy metal solutions, quantity of NPs and time of contact to check its effect. The solutions were filtered for Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy (AAS) to check the effectiveness of nanoparticles in removal of heavy metals from synthetic water.
Different analytical procedures were used to characterize and check the removal efficiency of IONPS. Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), Scanning Electron
Microscopy (SEM) and Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (EDS) were used to
characterize the NPs. Atomic absorption spectroscopy was used for measuring the
concentrations of Pb and Ni in synthetic water. The characteristic peak at 594.03 nm in
FTIR measurement suggests the development of iron oxide nanoparticles. According to
SEM data, the iron oxide nanoparticles developed had a spherical shape and vary in size.
EDS observation validates the presence and contribution of iron and oxygen in total weightII percentage. Atomic Absorption spectroscopy (AAS) revealed varied absorbance of HM in relation to characteristics such as the effect of time, the quantity of NP, and the known concentration of solution.
