Treatment of pharmecutical waste water using luffa cylindrica

Abstract

Wastewater refers to any water that has been adversely affected in terms of its quality by anthropogenic influences and is defined as an amalgam of water-conveyed wastes from the sanitary conveniences of dwellings; commercial; institutional and industrial facilities (Rinkesh, 2022). It originates from domestic, commercial and industrial sources. From the standpoint of sources of generation, wastewater may be defined as a combination of the liquid or water-carried wastes removed from residences, institutions, and commercial and industrial establishments. Despite water being the most important resource in the world it is the most poorly managed in the world. This research will mostly focus on industrial waste water treatment. Industrial wastewater, especially from chemical and pharmaceutical production, often contains substances that need to be treated before being discharged into a biological treatment plant and subsequent water bodies (Cisneros, 2011). According to (Water.org, 2022), Uganda as a country has experienced two decades of economic growth, leading to large population movements from rural areas to informal settlements around urban centers. High population growth stressed the water and sanitation services that exist. According to (Water.org, 2022). An estimated 3billion to 10billion gallons of untreated waste is released from sewage treatment plants annually and about 80percent of waste water worldwide flows back into the ecosystem untreated and this means that 1.8 billion people use a contaminated source of drinking water (According to the US Environmental protection agency.) Uganda and around the world, millions are navigating the COVID-19 pandemic with the added challenge of living without access to safe water. Now more than ever access to safe water is critical to the health of families in Uganda and failure to implement this will further still strain the limited incomes of the different households. Many conventional treatment techniques have been developed to treat wastewater containing heavy metal ions that are detrimental to health and the environment (Guo, 2017). Some examples are membrane separation, ion exchange, chemical precipitation, flotation, coagulation-flocculation and electrolytic recovery. These technologies have some disadvantages to their usage such as corrosion of electrodes for electrolytic recovery, non-selectivity for ion exchange, chemical sludge production for chemical precipitation among others and they are collectively expensive and all have high energy consumption (Barakat, 2011) (kurniawan, 2006) Some examples of these conventional treatment systems are the ion exchange and adsorption treatment process which requires an ion exchange resin and activated carbon, as an adsorbents, respectively. This is an efficient but a costly approach to wastewater treatment system. Therefore to solve the problems affecting the conventional means of industrial waste water treatment in Uganda, luffa cylindrica should be introduced as an adsorbent for industrial waste water treatment (Angiro, 2020). Luffa cylindrica is a low cost and widely available adsorbent derived from a biological source and is a good candidate for an efficient and economical alternative adsorbent for use in bio-sorption technology. Luffa is a lignocellulose material having a high affinity for heavy metal ions and other pollutants in aqueous solution (BioNET, 2011). It is a sustainable natural resource material that is produced in many countries as a waste and also utilized as a domestic product. The loofa fruit is commonly grown in India, Brazil, China, Japan and Central America and has a cultivation history in the tropical countries of Africa. A number of research works have been conducted worldwide to ascertain the use of luffa cylindrica in waste water treatment for instance a research conducted and published online in Wiley Inter-science about the possibility of water treatment in copper. It particularly focused on the possibility of its regeneration by desorption chemical. However, in Uganda, there is scanty information on the use of luffa cylindrical in waste water treatment except for the sponges for bath hence the need for this research to be conducted. (Ykhlef, Salah, & Ghania, 2011).