Green Route for the Removal of Inorganic Pollutants from Aquatic Environment

Medhat Ibrahim

Spectroscopy Department, National Research Centre, 33 El-Bohouth Str., 12622, Dokki, Giza, Egypt

Aquatic plants such as water hyacinth show potential to remove inorganic pollutants.  Certain modifications are needed to ensure the machines of uptake to maximize the transport from the environment onto the plant and minimize the reverse process. In this sense water hyacinth was modified to enhance its ability to remove pollutants. One of these modifications is to cross link the plant together with natural polymers to form microsphere. We granted a patent 2011/1625 entitled “Preparation of microspheres from dried water hyacinth for removing Pb from industrial wastewater" in which a microsphere is presented from chitosan and dried water hyacinth, which has the ability to remove divalent metals from wastewater. Another modification is conducted as chitosan is replaced with sodium alginate. The plant is dried with solar drying system in order to scale up the dried plant and minimize cost. A small solar power station is built to provide electricity to minimize cost. The produced microsphere now is cost effective and our recent work with Italian scientists at CNR, Rome is continued to eliminate the adverse impact of the produced microsphere and have it as ecofriendly with no adverse impact on the aquatic environment.