Fabrication of GO-CS-AgNP nanocomposite for the treatment of organic pollutants from tannery wastewater

Leather industries have been criticized heavily for their high emissions of pollutants. Amongst those, organic pollutants were rarely emphasized to be removed till date. This research aims to put a significant mark on organic pollutant removal from tannery wastewater. The performance of nanocomposite fabricated with GO-CS-AgNP has been investigated for adsorbing organic pollutants from raw wastewater. The characteristics of the nanocomposite were tested with respect to fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) analysis and the scanning electron microscope (SEM) test. The performance of this sorbent was evaluated in respect with monitoring parameters like pH, dose optimization and contact time optimization. The UV-Vis spectroscopy at 450 nm showed a better outcome at pH 7.5 when applying 0.008g of nanocomposite in 40 min of stirring time, removing 95.426% of organic pollutants. The BOD and COD were removed by 85.21% and 83.61% respectively. Besides, the content of heavy metals was also recorded to be significantly removed. The adsorption mechanism was found to follow pseudo 2
^nd
order reaction and Freundlich isotherm model. Characteristic evaluation of the fabricated nanocomposite and its behavior of adsorption allow it to be used without hampering the environment heavily.