Environmentally friendly low-cost graphene oxide-cellulose nanocomposite filter for dye removal from water

Abstract

In the past few decades, rapid and aggressive industrialization and urbanization have led to the production of various toxic pollutants, both inorganic (e.g. Mercury, Lead), and organic (e.g. dyestuff wastewater (Dotto and Pinto, 2011), oil spills from sea transportation (Yang et al., 2014, Zhu et al., 2011), which have disturbed the balance of the aquatic ecosystem, seriously damaging environmental and human health. Industrial wastewater contains harmful contaminants or pollutants and needs further treatment required to remove them before discharge. For example, wastewater discharged from the textile industry contains harmful dyes such as Crystal Violet, Congo Red, and Methylene Blue. (Robinson et al., 2001, Mahmoodi and Arami, 2009) Dyes are coloured carcinogenic organic compounds or mixtures that may be used to give colour to a substrate and are often found in the releases from textile, rubber, plastic, printing, leather, and cosmetic industries, which are among the most exponentially growing industries. (Malik and Grohmann, 2012, Foroughi-Dahr et al., 2015) Among these methods, adsorption is a promising technique that is highly effective and widely applied due to its high efficiency and simplicity, specifically, many effective carbon-based nanocomposites have also been prepared for the adsorption of dyes in wastewater.