Bioremediation of Heavy Metal contaminated Wastewater by Herbal Tea Residue

Introduction: The metal bio-adsorption is the removal of metal ions by inactive, nonliving biomass due to highly attractive forces present between them. Adsorption is a process where the atoms, ions or molecules of dissolved solids from liquid grips on the surface of solid. This is a process of mass transfer in which the dissolved solid from liquid gets deposited on the surface of solid because of physical or chemical interaction. In current study the potential of herbal tea residue consist of black tea and viola by different percentage in herbal tea formulation for removing heavy metals Cobalt and Nickel from pharmaceutical chemistry laboratories effluents from pharmaceutical faculty by approaches of various parameters like initial concentration, pH, contact time, temperature, agitation speed and bio-adsorbent dose were studied in 2019. All wastewaters contains Cobalt and Nickel much more than maximum permissible level setting by WHO for irrigation watering system. Batch experiments were investigated to determine the affinity of herbal tea biomass for adsorbing Co (ΙΙΙ) and Ni (ΙΙ) metal ions at pH 5-9. The removal of heavy metals by using low cost herbal tea residue after infusion of 10 minutes as bio-adsorbent was the main aim of current study.Methods: The initial concentration of heavy metals in the untreated waste waters and also treated by residue of herbal tea samples after 10 minutes up to 2 weeks were determined by ICP-Mass. One way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used for data analysis to measure the variations of metal concentrations using SPSS 22.0 software. The samples were analyzed by standardized international protocols in Nutrition and Food Sciences Research Center. Results: The best detoxification results of heavy metals obtained by viola (5%) and black tea residues (95%) after 24 hours. Further increase in contact time more than 24 hours did show significant (p ≥ 0.05) increase in bio-adsorption potential. Conclusion: The results of this study revealed that using viola in accompany by black tea residue can remove and decrease cobalt and cadmium significantly (p < 0.05), authors recommend to utilized herbal tea and even black tea residue for detoxification and recommend to study on the other waste materials due to find the best and optimum situation for cleaning up waste waters.