Clay-biodegradable polymer combination for pollutant removal from water

Abstract. In this study, a new treatment alternative is investigated to remove micropollutants from wastewater effectively and in a more cost-effective way. A potential solution is the use of clay in combination with biodegradable polymeric flocculants. Flocculation is viewed as the best method to get the optimum outcome from the combination of clay with starch. Clay is naturally abundantly available and relatively inexpensive compared to the conventional adsorbents used. Experimental studies were carried out with four different clays to select the best clay for further optimisation. The atrazine removal achieved is in the range of 10–99 % based on the clay concentration of 10–50 g L⁻¹. Optimisation of the best clay performer leads towards atrazine reduction of > 99 % with a dosage of 100 mg L⁻¹. The best and underperforming clays were then tested in other experiments with the addition of cationic starch flocculants. In this experiment, the addition of a polymer increased the atrazine removal for the underperforming clay to 46 % with only 10 mg L⁻¹ clay dosages. The clay flocculation test was also performed to test the flocculation efficiency of clays by the polymer. Approximately 80–84 % of the clay is flocculated, which shows exceptional flocculation efficiency in removing both clays and atrazine from the water matrices.