Engineered macroalgal and microalgal adsorbents: Synthesis routes and adsorptive performance on hazardous water contaminants

Lee XJ 1 , Ong HC 2 , Ooi J 3 , Yu KL 4 , Tham TC 5 , Chen WH 6 Show all authors , Ok YS 7

Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Centre for Energy Sciences (ENERGY), Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 2 Centre for Green Technology, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia. Electronic address: hwaichyuan.ong@uts.edu.au
  • 3 Department of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Technology and Built Environment, UCSI University, No.1, Cheras Lumpur, 56000 Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 4 Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 5 Axcel Campus, No. 11, The Cube, Jalan Puteri 7/15, Bandar Puteri, 47100 Puchong, Selangor, Malaysia
  • 6 Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan; Research Center for Smart Sustainable Circular Economy, Tunghai University, Taichung 407, Taiwan; Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Chin-Yi University of Technology, Taichung 411, Taiwan
  • 7 Korea Biochar Research Center, APRU Sustainable Waste Management Program & Division of Environmental Science and Ecological Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, 02841, Republic of Korea
J Hazard Mater, 2022 Feb 05;423(Pt A):126921.
PMID: 34523506 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.126921

Abstract

Colourants, micropollutants and heavy metals are regarded as the most notorious hazardous contaminants found in rivers, oceans and sewage treatment plants, with detrimental impacts on human health and environment. In recent development, algal biomass showed great potential for the synthesis of engineered algal adsorbents suitable for the adsorptive management of various pollutants. This review presents comprehensive investigations on the engineered synthesis routes focusing mainly on mechanical, thermochemical and activation processes to produce algal adsorbents. The adsorptive performances of engineered algal adsorbents are assessed in accordance with different categories of hazardous pollutants as well as in terms of their experimental and modelled adsorption capacities. Due to the unique physicochemical properties of macroalgae and microalgae in their adsorbent forms, the adsorption of hazardous pollutants was found to be highly effective, which involved different mechanisms such as physisorption, chemisorption, ion-exchange, complexation and others depending on the types of pollutants. Overall, both macroalgae and microalgae not only can be tailored into different forms of adsorbents based on the applications, their adsorption capacities are also far more superior compared to the conventional adsorbents.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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