Determine the filtration levels of banana peel to reduce heavy metals in wastewater —coming from drill pipe washing— including barium, cadmium, chromium, lead, nickel, and vanadium. The water used for this study was intentionally contaminated with high concentrations of the metals in a laboratory accredited by the Ecuadorian Accreditation Organization (OAE). The moisture of the banana peel was determined through a compositional analysis. Then three methods were used to dehydrate them (sterilizer, sun radiation and ovens) to identify the most effective one to pulverize the peel and place them inside the filter, since the objective was to obtain a porous medium (filter) through which the contaminated water could circulate smoothly. The peel of an average size banana weighs about 50 g. After being dehydrated at a temperature of 60° C, using a sterilizer (Autoclave), it was possible to obtain around 10 g of micropulverized shell, which can decontaminate 0.5 liters of water. By using 10 ml of micropulverized shell to filter a liter of contaminated water with heavy metals, it was possible to observe a 70% reduction in Barium, 93.62% in Cadmium, 90.99% in Lead, 93.82% in Nickel, and 65.52 % in Vanadium. The implementation of a banana peel based filter on treatment systems for industrial wastewater can effectively reduce heavy metals and even exceed the results of conventional filter methods, such as activated carbon, which reduces the levels of these metals by approximately 65%.
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