Characterization of Green synthesised Iron nanoparticles and application of synthesised Iron nanoparticles as an effective catalyst for the removal of Carcinogenic metals in aqueous solution

Abstract

The heavy metals such as chromium (Cr), lead (Pb) and cadmium (Cd) are considered as serious toxicants and act as carcinogenic agents that cause serious cancers to humans. The use of these heavy metals drastically increased in various industrial applications and subsequently increased the risk of contamination of these heavy metals in soil, water etc. To minimize the negative effects of these heavy metals, there is a need to reduce these heavy metals concentrations in environment samples. Hence this study focused to fabricate iron nanoparticles using Diospyros chloroxylon (Roxb.) for the removal of carcinogenic metals in water. The crystal structure, size and morphology of the nanoaprticles were evaluated and it was found that the particles were of rod shape with smooth surface and rhombohedral phase structure with an average particle size of 24 nm that contains 71.91 % of elemental iron. The heavy metal sorption experiments was conducted using selected concentration of heavy metal solution at various pH ranges, time and agitation rate. The maximum adsorption removal was 95.36 %, 98.42 % and 92.80 % within 120 min equilibrium time for Cr, Pb and Cd respectively suggesting that the nanoparticles possess high adsorption efficiency. The adsorption process follows pseudo-first order reaction kinetics with correlation coefficient of 0.978, 0.994 and 0.994 with rate constant (K) of 0.140, 0.280 and 0.108 respectively for Cr, Pb and Cd. The results suggest that the synthesized iron nanoparticles were biocompatible, stable and reusable that can be effectively utilized as promising agents for the removal of carcinogenic heavy metals in polluted water.