Nanobiotechnology for the removal of heavy metals from industrial wastewater

Nanobiotechnology offers promising techniques to treat and clean industrially wastewater. Past reports on wastewater particularly from textile industries, have shown significant levels of harmful and toxic heavy metals including chromium, lead, zinc and cadmium. Removal of such toxic heavy metals from wastewater are generally carried out with physical and chemical techniques that are expensive and non-environmental friendly. At present, it is important to explore potential techniques that are eco-friendly with low carbon footprint and cost-effective. Theerfore, in the present study, ZnO nanoparticles synthesized through green techniques were analysed for their poteintial to remove or degrade chromium (VI) ions to chromium (III) ions to lower the toxicity of heavy metals in water. The nanoparticles were synthesized using Bacillus subtilis and were characterized by FTIR and zetasizer to identify the shape, size and average particle size. Further, biologically synthesized ZnO nanoparticles were used to remove the chromium ions confirmed by the spectroscopic analyses. The study showed that biologically synthesized nanoparticles have significant potential to remove and/or degrade chromium ions. It is concluded that Nanobiotechnology is an efficient technique to clean waste water and biologically synthesized nanopartciles presents environmetal friendly and cost effective method that must be explored in future for other toxic heavy metals also.