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Flocculation of Waste Water Using Architectural Copolymers: Recent Advancement and Future Perspective

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Functional Polymer Nanocomposites for Wastewater Treatment

Part of the book series: Springer Series in Materials Science ((SSMATERIALS,volume 323))

Abstract

The main problem that the world is facing today is the scarcity of natural resources, including freshwater, due to ramping environmental pollution. It is primarily due to rapid industrialization posing a serious threat to the entire ecosystem. Most of the industries discharge effluents to the nearby wetlands and water bodies. As a result, the amount of usable water reduces drastically due to surface and ground waters contamination. The discharged effluents contain various toxic impurities in the form of metals, organic and inorganic particles, suspended solids, etc. If without proper treatment, the water is used, serious health hazards can occur. It is, therefore, necessary to treat the water before it is used for domestic and drinking purposes. There are many stages of treating natural wastewater for removal of organic, inorganic, and suspended loads. The primary process is to remove suspended inorganic solids and for that flocculation is generally used as it is one of the most convenient and cheapest unit operations. At the same time, it has also been found that polymeric flocculants are more effective than conventional inorganic flocculants for settling inorganic suspensions. It works both by charge neutralization and bridging mechanisms to settle the flocs in a reasonably quick time. This chapter vividly described the treatment of wastewater containing suspended inorganic solids with polysaccharide grafted hyperbranched copolymers as flocculants. Hyperbranched polymers have unique properties like higher solubility, higher hydrodynamic volume, more functional ends hence higher zeta potential for charge neutralization and more inner voids for bridging of flocs, which make them a better flocculant than conventional linear polymers. Along with hyperbranched polymer-based natural flocculants, future scope for incorporating various nanoparticles into the polymeric network for further improvement in flocculation efficiency, has also been discussed in this chapter.

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  1. Department of Polymer Science and Technology, University of Calcutta, 92-APC Road, Kolkata, 700009, India

    Subhadeep Chakraborty, Soumen Sardar & Abhijit Bandyopadhyay

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  2. Soumen Sardar
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  1. Nanotechnology Research Group Department of Chemistry, University of Limpopo (Turfloop), Polokwane, Sovenga, South Africa

    Mpitloane Joseph Hato

  2. Centre for Nanostuctures and Advanced Materials, DSI-CSIR Nanotechnology Innovation Centre, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Brummeria, Pretoria, South Africa

    Suprakas Sinha Ray

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Chakraborty, S., Sardar, S., Bandyopadhyay, A. (2022). Flocculation of Waste Water Using Architectural Copolymers: Recent Advancement and Future Perspective. In: Hato, M.J., Sinha Ray, S. (eds) Functional Polymer Nanocomposites for Wastewater Treatment. Springer Series in Materials Science, vol 323. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94995-2_3

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