Development of functional materials for the removal of heavy metals from industrial waste waters

Rapid development of industries and the consequent heavy metal pollution caused by the release of industrial effluents from a wide range of industries into the environment are considered as one of the most serious environmental problems the world is facing today. In this work, porous adsorbents based on the polymeric carbons with controlled porosity at nanoscale produced by the synthesis of resorcinol-formaldehyde aerogels followed by the pyrolysis of the gels at high temperatures under inert atmosphere are used in an electrochemical cell for the accelerated removal of gold, silver and cobalt metal ions from their standard solutions. The process allows fast recovery of metals from the solutions in a selective way by controlling the porous structure of the carbon and by the control of the deposition potential range for each target metal. The results of the removal of heavy metals from the standard solutions shows percentage recovery of 99.6, 94.7 and 98 percent for the removal of gold, silver and cobalt respectively.