Environmental Friendly Technologies for Wastewater Treatment: iosorption of Heavy Metals Using Low Cost Materials and Solar Photocatalysis

摘要

As globalization continues, and the earth's natural processes transform local problems into international issues, few societies are being left untouched by major environmental problems. Water-our most precious natural resource-is being threatened by a multitude of contaminants (toxic metals, recalcitrant organic compounds, pathogenic microorganisms), resulting in an unprecedented water contamination crisis with local and national implications. The research community proposes different solutions for this problem, some of them have been applied successfully for different environmental water/wastewaters problems, considered as the Best Available Technologies. However, the concept of best available technologies must be considered in addition to technical feasibility and costs, potential trade-offs between environmental issues, in order to avoid creating a new and more serious environmental problem when solving another. Therefore, research of Environmental Friendly Technologies, considering a complete environment assessment, will be the future of the water/wastewater treatment technologies. Under these circumstances, during the last 6 years, the environmental research group from Laboratory of Separation and Reaction Engineering (LSRE) has been focused on bring other perspectives to best available technologies for wastewater treatment and reuse, including the use of low cost materials, e.g. algal biomass and industrial wastes for toxic metal ions removal, and the use of solar radiation, as UV photon source, for disinfection of water by photocatalytic processes or detoxification of wastewaters using the combination of these processes with biological oxidation ones.