The development of wastewater coagulant derived from Artocarpus heterophyllus

Abstract

Conventional method of wastewater treatment may include the usage of inorganic coagulants which may cause significant environmental effects. This research was carried out to focus on development of coagulant derived from Artocarpus heterophyllus as wastewater treatment agent. In this research, the coagulant derived from Artocarpus heterophyllus seeds and peels was produced by chemical activation process. Samples were prepared in the form of powder at 90 micromillimeter pore size and sulphuric acid (H2SO4) with concentration of 0.6M was used as activation agent and the activation temperature was set at 400°C for two hours. The coagulant samples were prepared by dissolving the seeds and peels of Artocarpus heterophyllus with H2SO4 at 1:8 (w/v) ratios then 0.1g of each sample was tested against 10ml of synthetic kaolin wastewater. The physical and chemical characterization of the sample was done by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and Brunauer, Emmet and Teller (BET) while the adsorbent effectiveness were tested using turbidity meter. FTIR results showed that the functional group in the samples corresponds well with existing literatures. XRD analysis has found that the samples were amorphous in structure. The BET surface area of Artocarpus heterophyllus coagulant seeds and peels is 216.8152 m2/g and 281.0723 m2/g respectively proved that the surface area of both samples become larger after heated which signifies larger surface area and pore diameter of the adsorbent. Result obtained through turbidity meters found that 11% (w/v) Artocarpus heterophyllus seeds coagulant showed 59.69% in turbidity removal while 14% (w/v) Artocarpus heterophyllus peels coagulant showed 76.88% in turbidity removal. This study had confirmed the efficacy of Artocarpus heterophyllus as coagulant up to an acceptable degree, however further study are needed to guarantee better percentage in turbidity removal.