Abstract:
Water pollution has been the major cause of shortage of clean water in Kenya. This promptscitizens to use wastewater for domestic purposes. For example river Kapingazi in Embu wherewaste from the region is dumped is used by the residents for irrigation and domestic purposes.Industrialization which is the major cause of water pollution contaminates water with heavymetal ions. Heavy metal ions are a threat to the health of human beings due to their toxic andbioaccumulation behavior. Such heavy metals include lead, arsenic, chromium, zinc, copper andmercury. Some of these heavy metals such as copper are essential but become toxic in highconcentrations. Therefore there is need to reduce their presence in water through treatment.Conventional methods for wastewater treatment include chemical precipitation, reverse osmosis,ion exchange, membrane filtration and biosorption. Most of methods of wastewater treatment areexpensive and partially remove heavy metals ions. Currently biosorption is being investigated forits ability to remove heavy metal ions. Biosorption uses readily available biological andagricultural wastes such as banana peels, carrot peels, maize stalk charcoal, and banana petiole and so on to remove heavy metal ions from water. In this study banana petiole biomass will beused to remove Cr (III) ions from a prepared solution containing Cr (III) ions. Batch experimentson varying contact time and biomass dosage parameters will be done to determine the efficiencyof the biomass in removing the metal ions. Atomic absorption spectroscopy will then be used todetermine the absorbance of the samples. The results of this project will be used to determine theviability of using banana petiole biomass as an adsorbent. Furthermore they will be used toprovide an alternative to the available adsorbents.
