© by PSP Volume 16 – No 1. 2007 Fresenius Environmental Bulletin 99 REMOVAL OF SOME METAL IONS FROM WATER USING BATTERY INDUSTRY WASTE AND ITS CEMENT FIXATION Amit Bhatnagar 1, 2* , A. K. Minocha 1 , Seong-Heon Kim 2 and Byong-Hun Jeon 2 1 Environmental Science & Technology (E S T) Division, Central Building Research Institute (CBRI), Roorkee – 247 667, India * 2 Present address of corresponding author: Department of Environmental Engineering, Yonsei University, 234 Maeji Heungeop, Wonju, Kangwon-do, South Korea 220-710 SUMMARY A cheap adsorbent has been prepared utilizing battery industry waste, and investigated for the removal of some metal ions (Pb, Cu, Cr and Zn) from aqueous solutions. The results have shown that it adsorbs metal ions to a suffi- cient extent (33-64 mg g -1 ). The analysis of kinetic data in- dicates that adsorption is a first-order process. Further, the metal-laden adsorbent was immobilized into cement for ul- timate disposal, and no significant leaching was observed from the stabilized products. A mortar specimen prepared with 10% metal-laden adsorbent showed nearly the same compressive strength than cement alone. Thus, the present studies clearly reveal that battery industry waste can be fruitfully employed in treating industrial effluents contain- ing toxic metal ions. The proposed technology (utilization of industrial wastes for effluent treatment and ultimate dis- posal of adsorbents laden with pollutants in cementitious materials by fixation) provides a double-fold aim of waste- water treatment and solid waste management. KEYWORDS: Industrial waste minimization, battery industry waste, adsorbent, metal ions removal, water treatment. INTRODUCTION Water is basically required to sustain the continuation of life. But due to the large scale of industrial, agricultural and domestic activities, water is getting adversely affected by a number of pollutants. It is well-known that 70-80% of all illnesses in developing countries are related to water contamination, particularly susceptible for women and chil- dren. Despite, huge amounts of money are being spent on increasing water supplies and installing water treatment plants, because the quality of available surface as well as ground water is fastly deteriorating. Although groundwa- ter has several inherent advantages and low risk of conta- mination, yet it is being much more contaminated day by day. As a result of development of better analytical systems and health monitoring technologies, the acceptable mini- mum concentration of pollutants is progressively decreas- ing. Stringent regulations have been introduced by most countries, with respect to the presence of these pollutants in water, which bind industries and other bodies to mini- mize the concentrations appreciably before wastewater is discharged into natural bodies containing good quality wa- ter. In view of the importance of pollution control, a num- ber of technologies have been developed [1]. Some of them are coagulation, sedimentation, floatation, filtration, ion ex- change, membrane processes, adsorption, chemical precipi- tation, and disinfection. Among them, adsorption is considered to be better than other methods, because of convenience, easy operation and simplicity of design. Furthermore, this process can remove/ minimize different types of pollutants, and thus it has a wi- der applicability in pollution control [2]. Activated carbon has been found to be a versatile adsorbent, which can re- move diverse types of pollutants, such as metal ions, dyes, phenols and a number of other organic and inorganic com- pounds and bio-organisms. However, its use is sometimes restricted due to high costs. Attempts have, therefore, been made to utilize low-cost natural materials or agricultural/ industrial wastes as alternative adsorbents. The aim behind this is to minimize the cost of adsorbent so that regenera- tion can be dispensed with. But the utilization of industrial waste materials is of vital concern over the past few years because these wastes represent unused resources and, in many cases, cause serious disposal problems. The aim behind using waste materials as adsorbents is that it will provide a two-fold advantage to environmental pollution. Firstly, the volume of waste materials could be partly re- duced and, secondly, the developed adsorbents can reduce wastewater pollution at reasonable costs. Thus, a number of industrial wastes [3-11] have been investigated, with or without treatment, as adsorbents for the removal of pol- lutants from wastewaters. However, they have not been found to be much successful in water pollution control. Additionally, most of these studies did not suggest any environmentally safe disposal method of metal-laden ad- sorbents. Battery industry waste is one of the important