Commercial synthetic hydrotalcite as an adsorbent nanomaterial for removal of bacteria from contaminated water

Abstract

Layered double hydroxides (LDHs) are regarded as potential adsorbents for water treatment from a wide range of pollutants. However, there are only a few studies concerning application of LDHs for elimination of microorganisms from aquatic systems. In this work, experiments were conducted to investigate the efficiency of commercial synthetic hydrotalcite Mg6Al2(CO3)(OH)16∙4H2O as an adsorbent for water purification from fecal indicator bacteria Escherichia coli BIM B-378 and Enterococcus faecalis BIM B-1530. Our findings indicate that exposure for 4 h to hydrotalcite (5 g/L) in suspension resulted in the removal of about 40% of coliforms and 25% of enterococci from water, at a high bacterial load (2×1010 CFU/L), and the removal efficiency of E. coli and E. faecalis did not significantly change when both bacteria were present in water. In addition, the percentage of removed bacteria increased with increasing of hydrotalcite concentration in the suspension (0.5 to 10 g/L), contact time (1-7 h) and decrease of pH (5.5), and decreased at low incubation temperature (16°C). Finally, hydrotalcite did not exhibit bactericidal activity and retention of bacteria was found to be reversible. Therefore, our findings suggest that commercial synthetic hydrotalcite could be potentially used in technologies of water treatment from bacterial contamination.