Published Paper Details:

The increase of pollution in the environment is major concern and the presence of heavy metals in water bodies is harmful for flora and fauna as well as human. Even, water of the Ganga River which is considered to be the pure water is also polluted. Thus, to reduce the heavy metals viz. mercury, iron and chromium loads of the water samples collected from the Ganga River and distilled water. We used maize tassel (male flowers of Zea mays) which is usually an agricultural by product. It acts as adsorbate and has adsorption capacities for all mercury, iron and chromium and was found to be comparable to those of other commercial adsorbents currently in use for the removal of heavy metals from aqueous solutions. Adsorption of heavy metals by maize tassel might be attributed to their protein, carbohydrates and phenolic compounds, which have metal binding functional groups, such as carbonyl, hydroxyl, and amino groups. The Ganga water samples were taken from Haridwar and Varanasi and distilled water preserved in bottles. Mercury, iron and chromium were observed in these pre treatment samples. The reading for mercury, iron and chromium of the water samples were observed at different concentration using UV-Spectrophotometer (2731 EI). Further, maize tassel was cleaned and pulverized to fine pieces and 0.1 gm powder were added to these water samples and kept for 24 h at room temperature. The water that drained out of the tassel and then the obtained post treatment samples were analyzed for the amount of metals remaining in it. Batch experiments was conducted on stimulated solutions using tassel powder as adsorbent and the effect of pH and concentration on the extent of mercury, iron and chromium removal was studied.