Materials with improved adsorbent properties, for retaining Cd2+ and Ni2+ from wastewater

In the most cases, wastewater contains both heavy metals in different concentrations and a number of other organic pollutants. Treating wastewater to remove and, if possible, recover heavy metals is vital for the entire food chain. To achieve this goal, we have designed new materials with improved absorption properties. Thus, we used some recyclable wastes such as power plant ash and eggshell together with zeolites and iron oxides, especially magnetite. The characterization of the new material, designed to retain heavy metals from waste water was done by analytical techniques such as SEM/EDAX, FT-IR, BET, AAS etc

Treating polluted water using innovative materials obtained from the recycling process of some waste

Water is the source of life and the basic element of activities/processes. That is why it is particularly important to depollute polluted water and return it to the industrial and agricultural circuit and, as far as possible, make it potable

Modern adsorbents for heavy metals captured from wastewater into the circular economy

Intensive industrialization as a requirement of the development of modern society has harmed the environment with severe repercussions on biodiversity, human health and food security. Special efforts are made to set highly effective methods for environmental remediation in the circular economy

Therapeutic Use of Some Romanian Medicinal Plants

Romanian traditional medicine has an extremely old history. The Dacian knowledge of the curative properties of medicinal plants was documented by Herodotus, Hippocrates, Galen, and Dioscorides. It must be emphasized that modern chemical screening has confirmed the therapeutic properties of the medicinal plants used by the Dacians. More interesting is that Dacians used many of these herbs for different dishes. Practically, for Dacians, food was medicine. Recent research on some Romanian medicinal plants has highlighted their pharmacognostical importance. It is known that currently, the importance and dynamics of the research on medicinal plants in the area of drug discovery continues to increase worldwide. The main reason is not only the high efficiency of secondary metabolites in case of serious diseases (cancer, viral infections, malaria, etc.) but also the minimization of the side effects of the synthetic drugs

Innovative Low-Cost Composite Nanoadsorbents Based on Eggshell Waste for Nickel Removal from Aqueous Media

In a contemporary sustainable economy, innovation is a prerequisite to recycling waste into new efficient materials designed to minimize pollution and conserve non-renewable natural resources. Using an innovative approach to remediating metal-polluted water, in this study, eggshell waste was used to prepare two new low-cost nanoadsorbents for the retrieval of nickel from aqueous solutions. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) results show that in the first eggshell–zeolite (EZ) adsorbent, the zeolite nanoparticles were loaded in the eggshell pores. The preparation for the second (iron(III) oxide-hydroxide)–eggshell–zeolite (FEZ) nanoadsorbent led to double functionalization of the eggshell base with the zeolite nanoparticles, upon simultaneous loading of the pores of the eggshell and zeolite surface with FeOOH particles. Structural modification of the eggshell led to a significant increase in the specific surface, as confirmed using BET analysis. These features enabled the composite EZ and FEZ to remove nickel from aqueous solutions with high performance and adsorption capacities of 321.1 mg/g and 287.9 mg/g, respectively. The results indicate that nickel adsorption on EZ and FEZ is a multimolecular layer, spontaneous, and endothermic process. Concomitantly, the desorption results reflect the high reusability of these two nanomaterials, collectively suggesting the use of waste in the design of new, low-cost, and highly efficient composite nanoadsorbents for environmental bioremediation