Green and Superior Adsorbents Derived from Natural Plant Gums for Removal of Contaminants: A Review

Abstract

The ubiquitous presence of contaminants in water poses a major threat to the safety of ecosystems and human health, and so more materials or technologies are urgently needed to eliminate pollutants. Polymer materials have shown significant advantages over most other adsorption materials in the decontamination of wastewater by virtue of their relatively high adsorption capacity and fast adsorption rate. In recent years, “green development” has become the focus of global attention, and the environmental friendliness of materials themselves has been concerned. Therefore, natural polymers-derived materials are favored in the purification of wastewater due to their unique advantages of being renewable, low cost and environmentally friendly. Among them, natural plant gums show great potential in the synthesis of environmentally friendly polymer adsorption materials due to their rich sources, diverse structures and properties, as well as their renewable, non-toxic and biocompatible advantages. Natural plant gums can be easily modified by facile derivatization or a graft polymerization reaction to enhance the inherent properties or introduce new functions, thus obtaining new adsorption materials for the efficient purification of wastewater. This paper summarized the research progress on the fabrication of various gums-based adsorbents and their application in the decontamination of different types of pollutants. The general synthesis mechanism of gums-based adsorbents, and the adsorption mechanism of the adsorbent for different types of pollutants were also discussed. This paper was aimed at providing a reference for the design and development of more cost-effective and environmentally friendly water purification materials.

Optimization of welan gum extraction and purification using lysozyme and alkaline protease

“…Liu et al pointed out that the poor environmental tolerance of Sphingomonas sp., the high viscosity and weak acidity resulting from welan gum accumulation, and the pigments produced during carotenoid synthesis lead to the high energy consumption and costs of polysaccharide purification (Liu et al 2020). Ge et al found that the pigment adsorption capacity of welan gum is pH-dependent, with acidic conditions favoring pigment adsorption (Ge et al 2022). While studying welan gum/graphene oxide nanocomposite hydrogels, Yu et al discovered that welan gum has excellent pigment adsorption ability, which indicates its weak ability to remove carotenoids (Yu et al 2015).…”