Wastewater treatment is crucial to ensure a sustainable supply of clean water, especially for human use. Natural flocculants can overcome the disadvantages of chemical flocculants in wastewater treatment. This study proposes a new natural-based flocculant from the Tacca leontopetaloides plant for leachate treatment. The plant tuber was processed through gelatinization to produce Tacca leontopetaloides biopolymer flocculant (TBPF). The characterization of TBPF for flocculant properties was investigated, and the performance of TBPF on leachate treatment using a standard jar test procedure was examined at different pH values of leachate and TBPF dosages. The characteristics of TBPF in terms of amylose/amylopectin fraction, viscosity, and zeta potential were 26:74, 0.037–0.04 Pa·s, and −13.14 mV, respectively. The presence of –COOH and –OH structure in TBPF indicates the flocculant properties. TBPF reduced the turbidity, total suspended solids (TSS), and color from 218 NTU, 214 mg/L, 14201 PtCo to 45.8–54.5 NTU, 19.3–19.9 mg/L, and 852–994 PtCo, respectively, using 240 mg/L of TBPF at pH 3. These results show a high potential of the new plant-based TBPF for leachate treatment and water industry applications.
Electroless plating wastewater contains mixed metals element. Although precipitation is the most common method applied to remove metals from the wastewater, it fails to completely precipitate all the metals at a single pH. The present work evaluates the effectiveness of the sulphide and the hydroxide precipitation for removal of nickel, zinc and copper from industrial wastewater, namely acid rinse and nickel rinse samples. The optimum pH and coagulant dosage were determined via Jar Test for both types of samples. Sulphide precipitation removed heavy metals more efficient than hydroxide precipitation. For the acid rinse sample, 95.32% of nickel was removed using sulphide precipitation while 76.66% removal using hydroxide precipitation. For nickel rinse sample, 93.75% of zinc was removed using sulphide while 68.8% removal using hydroxide. 65.75% of nickel was removed using both sulphide and hydroxide. Total removal of copper was achieved for both hydroxide and sulphide precipitation, either from acid rinse or nickel rinse samples.
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