• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.264-269
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• 2001

Large amounts of orange juice are produced in Japan every yea.. Accompanied by the production of orange juice, large amount of juice residues are also generated in nearly the same amounts with juice. Although, at present, some of these residues are marketed as a feed for cattle after drying and mixing with lime, the marketing price is lower than its production cost and the difference is paid by the consumers as a part of the price of orange juice. In the present work, we developed new innovative use of orange juice residue, a biomass waste, as adsorption gel for removing toxic heavy metals such as lead. arsenic, selenium and so on as well as radioactive elements such as uranium and thorium from environments. The major components of orange juice residue are cellulose. hemicellulose and pectin, which are converted into pectic. acid, an acidic polysaccharide, by means of saponification with concentrated sodium hydroxide solution. In the previous work, we found that crosslinked pectic acid gel strongly an selectively adsorbs lead over other metals such as zinc an copper. On the other hand. it is well known that polysaccharides such as cellulose can be easily phosphorylated and that phosphorylated polysaccharides have high affinity to uranium and thorium as well as some trivalent metals such as ferric iron and aluminum. Taking account of the noticeable characteristics of these polysaccharides, 2 types of adsorption gels were prepared from orange juice residue: one is the gel which was prepared by saponificating the residue followed by crosslinking with epichlorohydrin and another is that prepared by crosslinking the residue followed by phosphorylation. The former gel exhibited excellent adsorptive separation behavior for lead away from zinc owing to high content of pectic acid while the latter gel exhibited that for uranium and thorium. Both types of adsorption gels exhibited high affinity to ferric iron, which enables selective and strong adsorption for some toxic oxo-anions of arsenic (V and III), . selenium and so on via iron loaded on these gels. These results demonstrate that biomass wastes such as orange juice residue can be effectively utilized fer the purpose of removing toxic heavy or radioactive metals existing in trace or small amounts in environments.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.369-373
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• 2008

Special concern has been given to the elevated arsenic content in soils because of its high mobility and toxicity. Layered double hydroxide (LDH) which has a high anionic exchange capacity is another potential anion adsorbent for toxic anions such as arsenic, chromate and selenium etc. The uptake of arsenate from aqueous solutions by the calcined Mg-Al LDH has been investigated. The sorption capacity was about 530 mmol/kg. Sorption isotherm was defined as L-type in which arsenate was removed by LDH through anion uptake reaction. Arsenate sorption by the calcined Mg-Al LDH was occurred by reconstruction of LDH's framework. Competitive adsorption revealed that Mg-Al LDH had higher selectivity for arsenate than for sulfate. These results strongly suggest that calcined Mg-Al LDH has a promising potential for efficient removal of toxic metal oxides like arsenates from aqueous environments.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.95-105
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• 2020

In this study, iron nanoparticles impregnated hydrochar (FeNPs@HC) was synthesized using lignocellulosic waste and simple one-pot synthetic method. During hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) process, the mixture of lignocellulosic waste and ferric nitrate (0.1~0.5 M) as a precursor of iron nanoparticles was added and heated to 220℃ for 3 h in a teflon sealed autoclave, followed by calcination at 600℃ in N₂ atmosphere for 1 h. For the characterization of the as-prepared materials, X-ray diffraction (XRD), cation exchange capacity (CEC), fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FT-IR), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), transmission electron microscope (TEM), Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS) were used. The change of Fe(III) concentration in the feedstock influenced characteristics of produced FeNPs@HC and removal efficiency towards As(V) and Pb(II). According to the Langmuir isotherm test, maximum As(V) and Pb(II) adsorption capacity of Fe_0.25NPs@HC were found to be 11.81 and 116.28 mg/g respectively. The results of this study suggest that FeNPs@HC can be potentially used as an adsorbent or soil amendment for remediation of groundwater or soil contaminated with arsenic and cation heavy metals.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.215-224
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• 2017

Arsenic (As) is known to be the most toxic element and frequently detected in groundwater environment. Inorganic As exists as arsenite [As(III)] and arsenate [As(V)] in reduced and oxidized environments, respectively. It has been reported that the toxicity of arsenite is much higher than that of arsenate and furthermore arsenite shows relatively higher mobility in aqueous environments. For this reason, there have been numerous researches on the process for oxidation of arsenite to arsenate to reduce the toxicity of arsenic. In particular, photooxidation has been considered to be simple, economical, and efficient to attain such goal. This study was conducted to evaluate the applicability of naturally-occurring goethite as a photocatalyst to substitute for $TiO_2$ which has been mostly used in the photooxidation processes so far. In addition, the effects of several factors on the overall performance of arsenite photocatalytic oxidation process were evaluated. The results show that the efficiency of the process was affected by total concentration of dissolved cations rather than by the kind of those cations and also the relatively higher pH conditions seemed to be more favorable to the process. In the case of coexistence of arsenite and arsenate, the removal tendency by adsorption onto goethite appeared to be different between arsenite and arsenate due to their different affinities with goethite, but any effect on the photocatalytic oxidation of arsenite was not observed. In terms of effect of humic acid on the process, it is likely that the higher concentration of humic acid reduced the overall performance of the arsenite photocatalytic oxidation as a result of competing interaction of activated oxygen species, such as hydroxyl and superoxide radicals, with arsenite and humic acid. In addition, it is revealed that the injection of oxygen gas improved the process because oxygen contributes to arsenite oxidation as an electron acceptor. Based on the results of the study, consequently, the photocatalytic oxidation of aqueous arsenite using goethite seems to be greatly feasible with the optimization of process.