Evaluation of Low Cost Industrial and Agricultural Wastes for Phenol Removal from Water

Phenol pollution in industrial effluent has been a serious environmental issue due to its toxicity and bioaccumulation and an aquatic life hazard and also a health risk to human beings. In an attempt to offer a low-cost and environmentally friendly treatment process, this research investigates the potential for applying low-cost industrial and agricultural solid waste products like waste paper, banana peels, and sawdust as low-cost alternative adsorbents in phenol removal from water. Some experiments were carried out for investigation of the effect of varied conditions of operation like initial concentration of phenol (30–120 mg/L), pH (3–13), adsorbent dose (0.5–2.5 g), contact time (30–150 min), and agitation modes. Amongst experimented materials, waste paper proved to have the highest adsorption of 90% maximum percent removal and 4.11 mg/g adsorption capacity at optimal conditions (pH 9, 30 mg/L, 2 g, 120 min).Banana peels and sawdust showed lower percentage removals of 65% and 61%, respectively, at the same conditions. The equilibrium data were applied to both Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models to determine the nature of the adsorption behavior. The data were more suitably fitted to the Freundlich model (R² = 0.999), indicating a heterogeneous surface and multilayer adsorption. . The research confirms that waste materials, in this instance, paper waste, can serve as effective water treatment adsorbents and that process parameter optimization could enhance the removal efficiency. These investigations justify the use of recovered materials in environmentally friendly processes of water treatment for pollution control and resource conservation.