| Abstract |
Chemical water pollution in water bodies has triggered and created
awareness among researchers on health effect of heavy metals toward living
organisms and how to control chemical pollution from worsen. The presence
of overwhelmingly high heavy metal concentration in human being could lead
to death. The main source of heavy metals in water come majorly from human
activities namely from industries, agricultural and household activities. Hence,
the development of more efficient and low cost tools or method to treat
polluted water is a never ending effort. Currently, there exist few methods to
treat polluted water particularly from heavy metals, but these conventional
methods are too costly and thus not suitable to be used in long term. In
addition, there are also few biosorbents from biomass being developed,
however they have limited application as they can only perform single metal
adsorption process. The use biomass as an adsorbent is a cheaper option
despite being environmental friendly due to abundant resources of agriculture
waste. Our team has successfully prepared a new biosorbent, which are
hybrid from Oil Palm Mesocarp Fiber (OPMF) (Elaesis guineensis sp.) and
Mangrove Bark (MB) (Rhizophora apiculate sp). This new biosorbent is very
efficient to absorb multiple heavy metal ion namely Cr, Cu, Ni, and Pb from a
solution. This new biosorbent has a great potential to be developed further as
a multielement biofilter, which can help to curb the problem of water pollution
caused by heavy metals. |