{"id":14436,"date":"2021-03-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/current_affairs\/uncategorized\/18-03-2021\/new-method-for-efficient-removal-of-heavy-metals-from-water\/"},"modified":"2021-03-18T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T00:00:00","slug":"new-method-for-efficient-removal-of-heavy-metals-from-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/current-affairs\/18-03-2021\/new-method-for-efficient-removal-of-heavy-metals-from-water","title":{"rendered":"New method for efficient removal of heavy metals from water"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>In News:<\/strong> A research team at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi has developed a fibrous membrane filter using a biopolymer-based material that helps to separate out the heavy metals from water samples.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>These membranes contain adsorbents \u2014 materials that attract and hold the metals.<\/li>\n<li>These adsorbents contain a large amount of a biopolymer, Chitosan, derived from crab shells that is mixed with a well-known polymer, Nylon.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Heavy Metals<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u2018Heavy metal\u2019 refers to any metallic chemical element that has a relatively high density, atomic weights, or atomic numbers and is toxic or poisonous at low concentrations.<\/li>\n<li>Eg. Mercury(Hg), Cadmium(Cd), Arsenic(As), Chromium(Cr), Thallium(Tl), Lead (Pb).<\/li>\n<li>The problems of arsenic pollution in the Ganga basin are well known in India.<\/li>\n<li>Major hazardous metals of concern for India in terms of their environmental load and health effects are lead, mercury, chromium, cadmium, copper, and aluminium.<\/li>\n<li>They are released into the water through anthropogenic activities such as mining, manufacturing, electroplating, electronics, and fertilizer production, among others.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>About the Invention<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Earlier Method: <strong>Melt Blowing method<\/strong> was normally used to produce the fibres used to make regular cartridge filter-assemblies<\/li>\n<li>New Method: <strong>Solution Blowing:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>The IIT Mandi researchers have used a process called \u201csolution blowing\u201d.<\/li>\n<li>Solution blowing produces fibres that are nanometres in diameter.<\/li>\n<li>When the fibres get finer, their surface area increases tremendously, which results in better adsorption of heavy metals.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Benefits of Solution Blowing Method:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Adsorption of Heavy Metal:<\/strong> It has made adsorption more efficient.\n<ul>\n<li>Normally, absorbent fibres bind to the target metal only at their surface, in their nanofiber membranes.<\/li>\n<li>But in new natural polymer infused fibres, the adsorption was seen to happen at the sub-surface scale as well, which translates to higher metal removal efficiency.<\/li>\n<li>Eg. almost 302mg of copper ions could be adsorbed by 1g of adsorbent.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Eco-Friendly: <\/strong>Solution blowing processes can enable blending of natural polymers like chitosan and lignin with synthetic polymers like Nylon.\n<ul>\n<li>Using this technique, 40 percent of the nylon was replaced with chitosan, which means 40 percent less fossil-fuel derived, polluting plastics<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Reusable upto 8 times: <\/strong>The membranes could be reused at least eight times before there was considerable reduction in the efficiency of metal adsorption.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Easy recovery of adsorbed Metal:<\/strong> Recovery of the adsorbed metal in a metal-hydroxyl nitrate form was also easy, which is a value-addition to the membrane filter.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.downtoearth.org.in\/news\/pollution\/new-method-for-efficient-removal-of-heavy-metals-from-water-75980#:~:text=A%20research%20team%20at%20the,attract%20and%20hold%20the%20metals.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>DTE<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In News: A research team at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi has developed a fibrous membrane filter using a biopolymer-based material that helps to separate out the heavy metals from water samples. These membranes contain adsorbents \u2014 materials that attract and hold the metals. These adsorbents contain a large amount of a biopolymer, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[60,26,33],"class_list":["post-14436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-affairs","tag-environmental-pollution-degradation","tag-gs-3","tag-science-technology"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/wp-images.nextias.com\/cdn-cgi\/image\/format=auto\/ca\/uploads\/2023\/07\/56900676268277current-affairs.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}