Discharging wastewater containing heavy metals of Cu, Pb, Zn and Cd into water\nbodies can cause toxicity in plants and aquatic animals and some of them will be unable\nto survive except algae. Wastewater treatment method to remove heavy metal\ncontaminants includes chemical precipitation, ion exchange, membrane, filtration,\nadsorption using activated carbon. However, these methods are either expensive or\nhave other disadvantages such as high energy consumption and inefficiencies when\nexisting heavy metals are at trace concentration. Biosorption using algae biomass can\nbe an alternative method to eliminate heavy metals. The objective of the project is to\ninvestigate the capability of Marine Algae (MA) and Freshwater Algae (FA) biomass\nin adsorbing heavy metals of Cu, Pb, Zn and Cd from water medium using synthetic\nwater and industrial water. MA and FA were obtained from the eastern coast of Pulau\nUbin and local fish farm respectively. After being fully washed with deionised\nwater, dried in a furnace for 105Ã?Å¡C, they are grinded to pass 1 mm2 of siever. MA and\nFA were characterised using FTIR to determine their functional groups. An industrial\nwater was collected from industrial discharge from metal factories in northern\nside of Singapore. Effect of adsorption time, adsorbent concentration, and pH were\nstudied. The result showed that FA and MA had a higher capability in adsorbing a\ntotal metal of about 40 ppm level from an industrial water, or 4 times than synthetic\nwater concentration, at the same adsorbent dosage of 50 mg. In conclusion, the\npresence of various functional groups, hydroxyl, carboxylic and amine groups, in all\nMA and FA samples had enabled the algae biomass to adsorb heavy metals of Cu, Pb,\nCd and Zn from synthetic and industrial water. Due to their biosorptive properties\nand fast adsorption capability, algae could be a potential method for cleaning up surface\nwater or post-treatment of wastewater and minimise the cost of eutrophication.
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