A Review on Removal of Heavy Metals from Aqueous Solution using Low Cost Adsorbents

Heavy metals toxicity caused by industrial waste water and other natural sources has become a threat to environment and ecosystem for the past many decades. Very small concentration of metallic ions present in water increases health problems to living organisms. Although there are various conventional treatment methods such as chemical precipitation, ion exchange, coagulation, flocculation, electrochemical technique, adsorption and co-precipitation are available for removal of heavy metals from aqueous solution. A number of researchers paid their attention towards biosorption which involve highly effective and economical adsorption technique for removal of heavy metals using various inexpensive adsorbents such as agricultural waste material, waste by products of pharmaceutical fermentation, food processing, fruit waste and dead microbial biomass. The use of low cost adsorbents is highly preferable due to reduced cost of waste disposal and thus leads to environmental protection. In this review paper, a compiled scattered available research work related to use of various adsorbents for the removal of commonly occurring heavy metals have been reported