Water Remediation

Shantanu BhattacharyaAkhilendra Bhushan GuptaAnkur GuptaAshok Pandey Editors

Energy, Environment, and Sustainability

Energy, Environment, and Sustainability

Series editors

Avinash Kumar Agarwal, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Instituteof Technology, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, IndiaAshok Pandey, Distinguished Scientist, CSIR-Indian Institute of ToxicologyResearch, Lucknow, India

This books series publishes cutting edge monographs and professional booksfocused on all aspects of energy and environmental sustainability, especially as itrelates to energy concerns. The Series is published in partnership with theInternational Society for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability. The books inthese series are editor or authored by top researchers and professional across theglobe. The series aims at publishing state-of-the-art research and development inareas including, but not limited to:

• Renewable Energy• Alternative Fuels• Engines and Locomotives• Combustion and Propulsion• Fossil Fuels• Carbon Capture• Control and Automation for Energy• Environmental Pollution• Waste Management• Transportation Sustainability

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15901

Shantanu Bhattacharya • Akhilendra Bhushan GuptaAnkur Gupta • Ashok PandeyEditors

Water Remediation

123

EditorsShantanu BhattacharyaDepartment of Mechanical EngineeringIndian Institute of Technology KanpurKanpur, Uttar PradeshIndia

Akhilendra Bhushan GuptaDepartment of Civil EngineeringMalaviya National Institute of TechnologyJaipur

Jaipur, RajasthanIndia

Ankur GuptaSchool of Mechanical SciencesIndian Institute of Technology BhubaneswarBhubaneswar, OdishaIndia

Ashok PandeyCSIR-Indian Institute of ToxicologyResearch

LucknowIndia

ISSN 2522-8366 ISSN 2522-8374 (electronic)Energy, Environment, and SustainabilityISBN 978-981-10-7550-6 ISBN 978-981-10-7551-3 (eBook)https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7551-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017959918

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part ofthe material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or informationstorage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodologynow known or hereafter developed.The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in thispublication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt fromthe relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this bookare believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or theeditors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errorsor omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claimsin published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Preface

Energy demand has been rising remarkably due to increasing population andurbanization. Global economy and society are significantly dependent on the energyavailability because it touches every facet of human life and its activities.Transportation and power generation are major examples of energy. Without thetransportation by millions of personalized and mass transport vehicles and avail-ability of 24 � 7 power, human civilization would not have reached contemporaryliving standards. The first international conference on ‘Sustainable Energy andEnvironmental Challenges’ (SEEC-2017) was organized under the auspices of‘International Society for Energy and Environmental Sustainability’ (ISEES) by the‘Center of Innovative and Applied Bioprocessing’ (CIAB), Mohali, from February26 to 28, 2017. ISEES was founded at IIT Kanpur in January 2014 with the aim ofspreading knowledge in the fields of energy, environment, sustainability andcombustion. The society’s goal is to contribute to the development of clean,affordable and secure energy resources and a sustainable environment for thesociety and to spread knowledge in the above-mentioned areas and awareness aboutthe environmental challenges, which the world is facing today. ISEES is involved invarious activities such as conducting workshops, seminars and conferences in thedomains of its interest. The society also recognizes the outstanding works done bythe young scientists and engineers for their contributions in these fields by con-ferring them awards under various categories.

This conference provided a platform for discussions between eminent scientistsand engineers from various countries including India, USA, South Korea, Norway,Malaysia and Australia. In this conference, eminent speakers from all over theworld presented their views related to different aspects of energy, combustion,emissions and alternative energy resource for sustainable development and cleanerenvironment. The conference started with four mini-symposiums on very topicalthemes, which included (i) New Fuels and Advanced Engine Combustion,(ii) Sustainable Energy, (iii) Experimental and Numerical Combustion and(iv) Environmental Remediation and Rail Road Transport. The conference had 14technical sessions on topics related to energy and environmental sustainability and apanel discussion on ‘Challenges, Opportunities and Directions of Technical

v

Education & Research in the Area of Energy, Environment and Sustainability’ towrap up the three-day technical extravaganza. The conference included 2 plenarytalks, 12 keynote talks, 42 invited talks from prominent scientists, 49 contributedtalks and 120 posters. A total of 234 participants and speakers attended thisthree-day conference, which hosted Dr. V. K. Saraswat, Member, NITI Aayog,India, as a chief guest for the award ceremony of ISEES. This conference laid outthe road map for technology development, opportunities and challenges in thistechnology domain. The technical sessions in the conference included Advances inIC Engines and Fuels; Conversion of Biomass to Biofuels; Combustion Processes;Renewable Energy: Prospects and Technologies; Waste to Wealth—Chemicals andFuels; Energy Conversion Systems; Numerical Simulation of CombustionProcesses; Alternate Fuels for IC Engines; Sprays and Heterogeneous Combustionof Coal/ Biomass; Biomass Conversion to Fuels & Chemicals—ThermochemicalProcesses; Utilization of Biofuels; and Environmental Protection and Health. Allthese topics are very relevant for the country and the world in the present context.The society is grateful to Prof. Ashok Pandey for organizing and hosting thisconference, which led to germination of this series of monographs, which included16 books related to different aspects of energy, environment and sustainability. Thisis the first time that such a voluminous and high-quality outcome has been achievedby any society in India from one conference.

The editors would like to express their sincere gratitude to the authors for sub-mitting their work in a timely manner and revising it appropriately at short notice.We would like to express our special thanks to Prof. Akhilendra Bhushan Gupta,Prof. Ankur Gupta, Mr. Pankaj Singh Chauhan, Dr. Rishikant and Prof. ShantanuBhattacharya who reviewed various chapters of this monograph and provided theirvaluable suggestions to improve the manuscripts. We gratefully acknowledge thesupport received from various funding agencies and organizations for successfullyconducting of the first ISEES conference SEEC-2017, where these monographsgerminated. These include Department of Science and Technology, Government ofIndia (special thanks to Dr. Sanjay Bajpai); TSI, India (special thanks to Dr. DeepakSharma); Tesscorn, India (special thanks to Sh. Satyanarayana); AVL, India; Horiba,India; Springer (special thanks to Swati Mehershi); CIAB (special thanks toDr. Sangwan).

At this stage of technology development, environmental pollution has becomethe greatest threat to the mother nature with rising level of pollutants in air, waterand soil specifically due to industrial growth and increasing population. A signif-icant amount of contaminants are being discharged into the environment and majorpercentage of this is discharged into water every day, causing a grave danger to allthe water inhabitants and dependent living entities. The industrial effluents aredischarged into the water streams of different rivers, ponds and canals instead ofstrict legal enforcement and directives, and this forms a major polluting source forthe existing water resources. The water is being used for different industrial pur-poses like cooling, processing, transportation and heat treatment. The water getsmixed with various harmful chemicals, organic and inorganic compounds, acids,etc., during these processes and forms a highly contaminated effluent which is

vi Preface

directly discharged into water streams by industrial houses. The wastewater con-taminates the groundwater and also the inland water resources and soil and affectsin a major way human, animal and plant life on a large scale. This critical issuecompels the researchers to use technical and scientific skills in the field ofwastewater treatment/remediation.

The current monograph is intended to spread knowledge to readers regarding theissue related to water pollution in recent times. This book describes variousphysical, chemical and biological methods, which are being utilized to provide acomplete remediation or remediation to an extent where wastewater could be dis-charged safely into inland waterbodies or could be possibly reused for agriculture orother purposes. The main objective of this monograph is to provide the completeexplanation of all the reasons, difficulties and processes to counter the water crisiswith their advantages as well as disadvantages.

Kanpur, India Shantanu BhattacharyaJaipur, India Akhilendra Bhushan GuptaBhubaneswar, India Ankur GuptaMohali, India Ashok Pandey

Preface vii

Contents

Part I General

1 Introduction to Water Remediation: Importance and Methods . . . . 3Shantanu Bhattacharya, Akhilendra Bhushan Gupta, Ankur Guptaand Ashok Pandey

Part II Water Remediation: Basics and Natural Water Remediation

2 Water Pollution, Human Health and Remediation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Komal Jayaswal, Veerendra Sahu and B. R. Gurjar

3 Remediation of Contaminated Urban Streams: A DecentralizedEcological Wastewater Treatment Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29Priyanka Jamwal

Part III Use of Carbon Based Composites for Water Remediation

4 Recent Advances in Carbon–Semiconductor Nanocompositesfor Water Remediation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45Kunal Mondal and Ankur Gupta

5 Dye Wastewater Treatment Using Carbonaceous Materialsby Microwave-Assisted Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75Remya Neelancherry

Part IV Various Techniques of Water Remediation

6 Treatment Technologies for Emerging Organic ContaminantsRemoval from Wastewater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91Sunita J. Varjani and M. Chaithanya Sudha

ix

7 Role of Photo-catalysis in Water Remediation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117Ankur Gupta, Kunal Mondal and Satyam Kumar

8 Water Splitting by Using Electrochemical Propertiesof Material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135Deepak Kumar Tiwari, Apurba Ray, Atanu Royand Sachindranath Das

9 New Age of Wastewater Treatment EmployingBio-electrochemical Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155M. M. Ghangrekar and Pritha Chatterjee

10 Remediation of Industrial Effluents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171Ashutosh Rai, Pankaj Singh Chauhan and Shantanu Bhattacharya

11 Recent Advancement on Bioaugmentation Strategiesfor Process Industry Wastewater (PIWW) Treatment . . . . . . . . . . 189Vivek Kumar, Madan Sonkar, Pooja and Sudheer Kumar Shukla

12 Fluoride Remediation from Drinking Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211Neelam Rawat and Vinay Kumar Patel

13 Applications of Remote Sensing and GIS in Water QualityMonitoring and Remediation: A State-of-the-Art Review . . . . . . . . 225Meenu Ramadas and Alok Kumar Samantaray

x Contents

About the Editors

Prof. Shantanu Bhattacharya is currently a Pro-fessor in Department of Mechanical Engineering andalso the Head of Design Program at the Indian Instituteof Technology Kanpur, India. He received B.S. degreein Industrial and Production Engineering from theUniversity of Delhi, New Delhi, India, in 1996, M.S.degree in Mechanical Engineering from Texas TechUniversity, Lubbock, TX, USA, in 2003 and Ph.D.degree in Bioengineering from the University ofMissouri, Columbia, MO, USA, in 2006. He servedas a Senior Engineer with Suzuki Motors Corporationfrom 1996 to 2002. He completed his postdoctoralresearch at the Birck Nanotechnology Center, PurdueUniversity, West Lafayette, IN, USA. He has around70 international journal publications in areas related tosensor systems, nanotechnology, nanomaterials,advanced functional materials, photocatalysis, etc. Heserves on the editorial board of several journals. He hasbeen awarded IEI Young Engineer Award in 2010,ISSS Young Scientist Award in 2013, NDRF DesignAward from IEI in Mechanical Engineering in 2014,and he holds a fellow position of IEI from 2016. Hisresearch interests include design and development ofmicrofluidics and MEMS platforms, nanotechnology,nanomaterials, advanced functional materials, visiblespectrum photocatalysis, sensors for various engineer-ing applications.

xi

Prof. Dr. Akhilendra Bhushan Gupta is aDistinguished Professor in Department of CivilEngineering, MNIT, Jaipur. His major research inter-ests are environmental engineering, environment andhealth, biological waste treatment, environmentalmodelling, bioprocess engineering, wastewater treat-ment. His research area focuses on various aspects ofwater and air pollution and their impact on humanhealth-evolved pathophysiologies for fluoride, nitrateand aluminium toxicities and linkages between airpollution and human respiratory health. He has alsodeveloped low-cost technologies for removal offluorides and nitrates from drinking water/wastewater. Advance bioprocesses for waste treatment,characterization of PM fractions in air and developingfield kits for biological analysis are his current areas ofresearch. He is also a Life Fellow of IE, India, and LifeMember of Indian Desalination Association, ISTE,Indian Society for Water Resources. He has publishedmore than 30 peer-reviewed research articles andsupervised 7 Ph.D. students in the research area ofenvironmental science.

Dr. Ankur Gupta is currently Faculty at IndianInstitute of Technology Bhubaneswar, Odisha. Hehas done his Ph.D. from Indian Institute of TechnologyKanpur. He got ‘ISEES Young Scientist Award’ in2017. He also got selected for ‘BRICS Young Scientistconclave’ held at Hangzhou, China. He is a LifetimeMember of Society of Energy, EnvironmentalSustainability (SEEC). He has published variousinternational papers in referred journals, conferencepapers along with a patent. His research interest ismicro-/nanomanufacturing and nanotechnology. Hehas won first prize in Electron Microscopy Contestheld in 2013 and 2014. His work has been presented inseveral international conferences which were held inthe USA (Material Research Society (MRS), SanFrancisco, California), Indonesia, etc., as well as insome reputed institutes within the nation like IITBombay, IIT Delhi, IIT BHU, IIT Guwahati, etc.). Hehas also been selected as one of the research scholars

xii About the Editors

from India to attend the workshop and deliver a talk atNational Institute of Nanotechnology (NINT),University of Alberta, Canada, in the area of nanofab-rication and characterization.

Prof. Ashok Pandey, DPhil, FBRS, FNASc, FIOBB,FISEES, FAMI is Eminent Scientist at the Center ofInnovative and Applied Bioprocessing, Mohali, andformer Chief Scientist and Head of BiotechnologyDivision at CSIR’s National Institute forInterdisciplinary Science and Technology,Trivandrum. He is Adjunct Professor at MACFAST,Thiruvalla, Kerala, and Kalaslingam University,Krishnan Koil, Tamil Nadu. His major researchinterests are in the areas of microbial, enzyme andbioprocess technology, which span over various pro-grams, including biomass to fuels and chemicals,probiotics and nutraceuticals, industrial enzymes,solid-state fermentation. He has authored more than1150 publications/communications, which include 16patents, more than 50 books, 140 book chapters,423 original and review papers, with h index of 78and * 25,000 citations (Google Scholar). He is therecipient of many national and international awardsand fellowships, which include Fellow of RoyalSociety of Biology, UK; Academician of EuropeanAcademy of Sciences and Arts, Germany; Fellow ofInternational Society for Energy, Environment andSustainability; Fellow of National Academy ofScience, India; Fellow of the Biotech ResearchSociety, India; Fellow of International Organizationof Biotechnology and Bioengineering; Fellow ofAssociation of Microbiologists of India; ThomsonScientific India Citation Laureate Award, USA; LupinVisiting Fellowship, Visiting Professor in theUniversity Blaise Pascal, France; Federal Universityof Parana, Brazil; EPFL, Switzerland; Best ScientificWork Achievement Award, Government of Cuba;UNESCO Professor; Raman Research FellowshipAward, CSIR; GBF, Germany; CNRS, FranceFellowship; Young Scientist Award He obtained hishonorary doctorate degree from Univesite BlaisePascal, France. He was Chairman of the InternationalSociety of Food, Agriculture and Environment,

About the Editors xiii

Finland (Food & Health) during 2003–2004. He isFounder President of the Biotech Research Society,India (www.brsi.in); International Coordinator ofInternational Forum on Industrial Bioprocesses, France(www.ifibiop.org), Chairman of the InternationalSociety for Energy, Environment and Sustainability(www.isees.org) and Vice-President of All IndiaBiotech Association (www.aibaonline.com). He isEditor-in-Chief of Bioresource Technology, HonoraryExecutive Advisors of Journal of Water Sustainabilityand Journal of Energy and EnvironmentalSustainability, Subject Editor of Proceedings ofNational Academy of Sciences (India) and EditorialBoard Member of several international and Indianjournals, and also Member of several national andinternational committees.

xiv About the Editors

Part IGeneral

Chapter 1Introduction to Water Remediation:Importance and Methods

Shantanu Bhattacharya, Akhilendra Bhushan Gupta, Ankur Guptaand Ashok Pandey

Abstract Water has always been one of the most essential entities for survival ofliving systems almost since the evolution of life form. It is pertinent to study watersystems in respect of enhancing the quality of water as it can be a significant sourceaffecting the living systems in a direct or indirect manner. Nowadays, increased levelof water consumption and correspondingly high levels of pollution have generated aprominent need for managing the water quality by maintaining safe levels for thewater to be used in specific applications. In this respect, water remediation methodshave taken a forward thrust in order to increase the water quality of potable water aswell as that of industrial grade water in order to prevent contamination of naturalwater resources due to the discharge of industrial effluents. Several methods of waterremediation such as physical, chemical, electrochemical and biological are discussedand worked out worldwide. This monograph gives a review of the importance ofwater remediation, various methods that are employed to remediate and some auto-mated techniques which have been breakthroughs in the field of water quality control.

Keywords Water remediation � Wastewater � Industrial effluentsPhotocatalysis � Organic contaminants

S. Bhattacharya (&)Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur,Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, Indiae-mail: bhattacs@iitk.ac.in

A. B. GuptaDepartment of Civil Engineering, MNIT, Jaipur, Jaipur, Rajasthan, Indiae-mail: abgupta.ce@mnit.ac.in

A. GuptaSchool of Mechanical Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar,Bhubaneswar, Odisha, Indiae-mail: ankurgupta@iitbbs.ac.in

A. PandeyCSIR-Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, Lucknow, Indiae-mail: ashokpandey1956@gmail.com

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018S. Bhattacharya et al. (eds.), Water Remediation, Energy, Environment,and Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7551-3_1

3

Water is an essential part of every living entity, and it is required to fulfil differenttypes of needs in every phase of the life cycle. Apart from drinking, water is usedfor cleaning, food processing, industrial operations and agricultural work. There isno substitute of water at present on the earth’s crust. Although the water is availablein plenty in oceans, such water is not useful for daily use. Only, 0.3% of total waterpresent on the earth’s crust is useful for the mankind. The other 99.7% is in oceans,soil, icebergs or floating in atmosphere in vaporized or aerosol form. Hence, theavailable water that is directly usable for sustenance should be wisely used and alsoshould be protected from against contamination. Hence, it is the need and necessityof the day to rapidly find out ways and means to firstly conserve water and then alsotry and safeguard water and remediate water in case it is contaminated so that it canbe reused to serve the nutrient transport needs of living organisms. Unfortunately,with an increase in population, industries and climate changes, the situation arisenposes a major challenge to usable water. Rising pollution in rivers and other waterbodies due to effluent discharge from various industries is identified as a majorsource of contamination. Surface water can be easily contaminated in comparisonwith groundwater due to higher accessibility. Water which is contaminated can beremediated/retreated to some extent for reuse. Different types of contaminants canbe removed from water by using traditional as well as modern approachesdepending upon the requirements. In the traditional approach, the water can befiltered by passing through a column of bed and bank material. This type offiltration technique provides a great alternative to water supply and treatment. Apartfrom filtration, riverbank filtration systems also provide protection against organicmatter, thus modulating the biochemical oxygen demand levels. Some of thecommon subsurface processes available naturally on the earth’s crust such asLeaching, hydrolysis, precipitation, oxidation and reduction also help in the nat-uralized treatment of water. Similarly, for surface water remediation, decentralizedin-stream ecological wastewater treatment approach can be deployed. Thesein-stream methods of treatment are perhaps cheaper involving an overall lowmaintenance cost. These methods provide a good self-purification capability nat-urally provided to water streams and other waterways providing naturally availablegood-quality potable water. The current monograph discusses all such aspectsrelated to water and its remediation.

A very important environmental challenge that is posed by contamination ofwater is the presence of emerging organic contaminants (EOCs), which reduce thequality of drinking water drastically. Some of the products which are readily usedby human beings such as medicines, pharmaceutical products, pesticides, andindustrial chemicals contribute directly as emerging organic contaminants. SuchEOCs are gaining a significant importance in today’s water remediation scenarioand are primarily involved in drawing the water technology road map primarilybecause they possess complex molecular nature and are very hard to detect andremove. Most of the wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) are not designed toremove such contaminants, and water technology is increasingly prompting thegeneration of domain knowledge in this new area and also prompting the creationof new technologies. There is always a huge possibility that these compounds and

4 S. Bhattacharya et al.

their metabolites may escape from the WWTPs and enter the aquatic environmentthrough the treatment plant discharge and also through the sewage. Many of thesechemicals are designated as health hazards, may have endocrine disruptive prop-erties (EDCs) degenerating the hormone upregulation within living systems andmay have deleterious consequences to the directly affected aquatic and terrestriallife form. Physico-chemical and biological properties govern the fate of EOCsduring wastewater treatment, and subsequent discharge of the untreatable con-stituents may pose the health challenges discussed above. Therefore, it becomesessential to improve treatment technologies in context of ability to remove EOCsand thus pose overall less environmental risk. The use of physical, chemical andbiological methods such as adsorption, ultrafiltration, electrodialysis, Fenton reac-tion, and photocatalysis has been extensively studied as new domain in this area,and such techniques are effective in removing some of the EOCs from wastewateralthough there are engineering requirements which are worked upon to make someof these techniques scalable with industrial effluent treatments.

Of significant mention is the Photocatalysis which is one of the most exploredphenomena to obtain potable water in spite of organic contamination in ground-water reserves due to the leaching of fertilizer products and other organic species.The term photocatalysis is understood as a chemical reaction that is caused byphotoabsorption behaviour of a material which is commonly known as a photo-catalyst. Water molecules absorbed over the surface of photocatalysts in normalenvironments are used to participate in an electron transfer reaction which breaksdown the molecules absorbed along with water over the surface of such catalyst.This carried out a direct breakdown of higher organic molecular species into lowermolecular sizes, and such size reduction may enable selective absorbtion of thesesmaller molecules over suitable surfaces. The higher-sized molecules althoughadsorbed over such surfaces may quickly create stearic hindrance and may allowthe diffusional migration process of other unabsorbed species to slow down.A suitable class of catalysts which are efficacious to perform photocatalysis are thesemiconductor materials with reasonable band gap which may furnish electrontransport through short levels of irradiation. Further, it is very much possible totailor the band gap as a function of structure, and morphology is the structuringscale that is suitably shifted to the mesoscale. In this event, creation of high-densitydefect states within the mesostructures may allow the electron transport process tobe very fast even with visible light irradiation. There are two distinct sources ofenergy extensively utilized in the photocatalytic applications in water treatment:solar energy and artificial ultraviolet (UV) light.

The monologue further describes how water splitting can help to generate ahydrogen economy which is the dream of several nations across the globe. Watersplitting—more specifically known as electrolysis of water into oxygen andhydrogen if carried out in an efficient manner—would be a key technologicalcomponent of a hydrogen economy. Reaching the goal of economical photoelec-trochemical (PEC) water splitting may likely involve one to combine the physics ofefficient solar absorbers with high-activity electrocatalysts for the hydrogen andoxygen evolution reactions (HER and OER). Water splitting processes coupled to

1 Introduction to Water Remediation: Importance and Methods 5

energy storage systems can also be another way of converting waste to energy andmay provide an indirect route to remediate the environmental challenges associatedwith wastewater.

Bioelectrochemical systems (BESs) also provide an energy-efficient pathway forwastewater treatment and have attracted the attention of many people in the pastdecade. A BES is a bioreactor that converts chemical energy from chemical bondsof the organic compounds into electrical energy through catalytic reactions that arebrought in by microorganisms under anaerobic conditions. The recent energy crisishas reinvigorated a high level of interest in BESs among the research community asa way to generate electric power or hydrogen from biomass without a net carbonemission into the ecosystem. BESs can also be used in wastewater treatmentfacilities to break down organic matters and recover valuable products. Solubleorganic matter such as monosaccharide, acetate derivatives, alcohols and others,present in wastewater, are oxidized by electrochemically active bacteria (EAB) inthe anodic chambers, and electrons and protons are produced that may be stored andharnessed in future applications.

Drinking water needs to follow technical specifications with all the componentsallowed in some permissible limits. The halides are another class of species whichmake it necessary for filtration processes to exist. For fluorides, the permissiblelimit is <1.5 mg/L in drinking water samples which is a sacrosanct standard. If limitof fluoride increases beyond this limit, it imposes significant effects to teeth andbones like dental fluorosis and/or skeletal fluorosis. Besides fluorosis, excessiveintake of fluoride also causes muscle fibre degeneration, low haemoglobin levels,thyroid, gastrointestinal problems, abdominal pain, reduced immunity, etc. Thealternative solution to this problem can be either to use alternative water resources(like surface water, rainwater and low-fluoride groundwater) or dilution, but thesesolutions alone cannot cater the high demand of potable drinking water due to itsinsufficiency. So de-fluoridation of drinking water is the only practical option toovercome the problem of high fluoride in drinking water. Hence, it is very nec-essary to bring down the fluoride level to permissible limits from our waterresources. The fluoride remediation can be basically carried out using three basicstrategies, precipitation and coagulation-based remediation techniques,membrane-based filtration techniques (reverse osmosis, nano-filtration, dialysis andelectrodialysis) and adsorption-based remediation techniques (using adsorbents likealumina/aluminium-based materials, clays and soils, calcium-based minerals, syn-thetic compounds and carbon-based materials). The new advancements in thefluoride remedial methods are also emerging and have been discussed in thismonograph.

Large-scale water remediation studies are these days possible due to recentadvancements in the field of remote sensing and geographic information systems(GIS). Remote sensing-based techniques have been found to assist with waterquality monitoring and management; however, GIS is what makes it possible toseamlessly link water quality monitoring in space and time with remediationstrategies at reduced costs. GIS has also facilitated the collection of data andcommunication of water quality hazards in real time, through display maps. Water

6 S. Bhattacharya et al.

quality parameters such as chlorophyll-a, algae bloom, turbidity, suspended sedi-ments and mineral content in water bodies (both surface and groundwater) havebeen studied using improved spectral and spatial resolution sensors and geospatialmodelling techniques at low cost and with greater accuracy. High-resolutionmapping of contamination zones through some of these rapid and accurate moni-toring techniques helps in allocating remediation efforts to the critically affectedareas quickly.

The entry of nanotechnology into the wastewater treatment engineering exem-plified a noteworthy advancement, and as such, nanoparticles (NPs) have beenexhaustively studied for possible remediation applications. Although NPs have achallenge related to their low levels of identifiability as foreign bodies by livingsystems, they do possess a high level of adsorption kinetics necessitating theirincreased usage in water remediation. The wastewater treatment with dispersed NPsuspensions is still a fledgling area for new knowledge generation and to someextent antagonistic on grounds related to health and environmental safety. NPs maypose challenges related to ecotoxicity which may be a retrograde in their overuse.Theoretically, porous nanocomposites containing nanoparticles trapped withinnanopockets is architectures which people do exploit heavily to utilize both the bestof surface area and less mobility of nanoparticles. A range of carbon nanocom-posites containing NP of semiconductor photocatalysts has worked very well in thefield of UV and visible-light-induced photocatalysis of wastewater. Variouscarbon-based nanocomposites which are commonly used for water remediation arecarbon–ZnO, graphene–SiO2/Cu2O, graphdiyne–ZnO, carbon nanoparticles, goldand platinum nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes–TiO2 nanotubes, carbon aerogel–TiO2, vertically aligned multiwalled carbon nanotube array–TiO2, graphene nano-platelets–SiO2, multiwalled carbon nanotubes, metal-doped ZnO nanohybrid,multiwalled carbon nanotubes–TiO2–SiO2, carbon nanofibres–Ag–TiO2, carbonnanotube–Ag3PO4 in Pickering emulsions, carbon nitrogen-doped TiO2–SiO2,carbon–Ag–TiO2, etc. Different nanocomposites have a common benefit of effec-tively degrading the organic effluents in that the application of photocatalysis isdirected to efficient and whole degradation and formed simple products that areenvironmentally safe; however, partial mineralization could have resulted in theformation of toxic by-products.

Carbonaceous material-based adsorption is further widely adopted as a methodfor dye wastewater treatment. Dye is introduced through textile, leather, paper,plastic and cosmetics industry effluents. The commonly adopted methods such asadsorption using activated carbon and filtration cause generation of a large amountof sludge and solid waste leading to high treatment cost. In recent years, incor-poration of microwave (MW) with the carbon compounds to attain compounds suchas granular activated carbon has served as a next-gen technology in the adsorptiveremoval/degradation of dye from wastewater. Such an area also is very novel and assuch explored in this monograph as a novel future direction to water remediation.

This research monograph presents both fundamental science and applied inno-vations on several keys and emerging technologies for water remediation. Specifictopics that are covered in the current monograph include:

1 Introduction to Water Remediation: Importance and Methods 7

• Water pollution, human health and remediation• Water remediation through natural filtration• Remediation of contaminated urban streams: a decentralized ecological

wastewater treatment approach• Treatment technologies for emerging organic contaminants removal from

wastewater• Role of photocatalysis in water remediation• Water splitting by using electrochemical properties of material• New age of wastewater treatment employing bioelectrochemical systems• Remediation of industrial effluents• Recent advancement in bioaugmentation strategies for process industries

wastewater (PIWW) treatment• Fluoride remediation from drinking water• Applications of remote sensing and GIS in water quality monitoring and

remediation: a state of the art review• Recent advances in carbon–semiconductor nanocomposites for water

remediation• Dye wastewater treatment using carbonaceous materials by microwave-assisted

methods

The topics are organized into five different sections: (i) general, (ii) waterremediation: basics and natural water remediation, (iii) various techniques of waterremediation, (iv) use of carbon-based composites for water remediation with a hopethat such an assembly of various domains of water remediation will help to generateawareness of the latest technology trends in the water technology industry.

8 S. Bhattacharya et al.

Part IIWater Remediation: Basics and Natural

Water Remediation

Chapter 2Water Pollution, Human Healthand Remediation

Komal Jayaswal, Veerendra Sahu and B. R. Gurjar

Abstract Water is considered as the most essential source of life and importantpart of our natural resources. Due to rapid industrialization, urbanization and lack ofawareness among people to consider water as a crucial commodity, around 80% ofthe world population is now facing water supply and security threat. In fact, about2% of planet water is fresh and only 0.036% of water is accessible for use, rest1.96% is present in polar ice caps, underground wells and aquifers. Furthermore,freshwater resources are progressively becoming unavailable due to huge amount ofpollution in drinking water sources and also due to ignorance by human orindustries and government authorities. The increasing water contamination bydischarging untreated effluent is major problem faced by humanity worldwide. Forthis, government authorities and other organizations concerned about water con-servation, awareness among people, strict laws about water security, sustainableand cost-effective wastewater treatment technology to overcome water pollutionand water shortage problem for humans and biodiversity.

Keywords Water pollution � Wastewater treatment � BioremediationEcology

2.1 Introduction

Water is the most vital among all natural resources and considered as the mostimportant for life. Due to rapid industrialization, urbanization and lack of awarenessamong people to consider water as a crucial commodity, around 80% of the worldpopulation is now facing problem related to water supply and security (Vorosmartyet al. 2010). While planet earth is mostly covered with water, however, only about2% of water can be considered for use and rest 98% is seawater that is unsuitable

K. Jayaswal (&) � V. Sahu � B. R. GurjarDepartment of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee,Roorkee-Haridwar Highway, Roorkee 247667, Uttarakhand, Indiae-mail: jayaswal.komal@gmail.com

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018S. Bhattacharya et al. (eds.), Water Remediation, Energy, Environment,and Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7551-3_2

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for drinking due to presence of salts. In fact from 2% of fresh water only 0.036% isaccessible for use, rest 1.96% is present in polar ice caps, underground wells andaquifers. Furthermore, freshwater resources are progressively becoming unavailabledue to huge amount of pollution in drinking water resources due to ignorance byhuman or industrial and government authorities (Kumar Reddy and Lee 2012).

Due to ignorance a large number of water resources get contaminated andbecome unsuitable for drinking and other purpose. Moreover, remaining freshwaterresources gets progressively polluted due to discharge of untreated pollutants,chemicals and hazardous waste from thousands of industry directly into water body.Evolving industrialization and rapid population growth lead to more water demandthat definitely marks water as a precious and fundamental commodity (Vorosmartyet al. 2010).

Emergent pollutants that are entering in water supply systems are pesticides,synthetic fertilizers, chemical compounds like dyes, heavy metals, hormones, per-sonal care products, detergents, pharmaceuticals product that directly or indirectlymay enter into the aquatic system and finally affect human health. Apart from this,waterborne pathogenic microbes enter the water system from research laboratory,hospitals, untreated sewage, septic tanks and various tanneries, food processing andmeat packaging industries (Schwarzenbach et al. 2010). Pollutants have direct effecton human health and ecosystem. Apart from anthropogenic sources, other naturalfactors that strongly affect water quality are floods, storm, volcanic eruptions,earthquakes, etc. Major water pollutants have been shown in Fig. 2.1. New tech-niques have to be developed in coming years, for clean water supply otherwisewater scarcity may lead to water wars and insecurity at social and political levels.

Fig. 2.1 Sources of water contamination (Kumar Reddy and Lee 2012)

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Without any proper strict regulation by government authorities and concernedorganizations, this severity of problem cannot be controlled. Lawmakers mustimpose strict policy for industries, organization and people for proper wastemanagement, treatment of discharge effluent, proper working of treatment plant andstrictly follow the effluent discharge standard. The increasing water contaminationby discharging untreated effluent is major problem faced by humanity worldwide.In fact, in developing country like India even though facilities are available but dueto mishandling practices and lack of sanitation awareness, water resources are notproperly utilized. In India, this problem is related to both rural and urban areas, forexample in most of the Indian city collection of household drinking water isdependent on season and infrequent supply results in storage of water. Duringstorage of water, there is a chance of contamination and level of contaminationincreases by number of factors like quality of container used, place of storage, watercollection site and handling practices (Brick et al. 2004). To overcome this problem,government authorities and other organization have to issue strict laws about waterregulation and security and also develop cost effective and sustainable wastewatertreatment technology to overcome water pollution and water shortage problem forhumans and biodiversity. Apart from this awareness campaigns must launch tomake people aware about importance of water (Kumar Reddy and Lee 2012;Vorosmarty et al. 2010).

2.2 Background

In twenty-first century, major problems faced by human society are interrelated towater quality and quantity issues. Furthermore, in coming decades these problemsare going to be intensified in wider sense due to climate change that will result inmelting of glaciers, rise in water level and temperature and change in water cyclepattern that is going to increase more frequent floods and droughts. A warmerclimate can hold more moisture, causing 7% increase in water vapour with rise inevery degree centigrade of temperature. Water vapour acts as greenhouse gas thatdrives earth’s hydrological cycle and change in climate (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Water/). Lack of proper sanitation has directly related to lack ofsafe drinking water which affects human health, for example, untreated excretaenters into the food chain causing severe health issues. Other major problemsrelated to water security are contamination of water source by pathogenicmicroorganisms and toxic chemicals which further lead to bioaccumulation inaquatic water plants and other living organisms including seafood and fish.Pollutants from domestic, agricultural and industrial sources merge to freshwatersources like rivers, lakes and groundwater aquifers without proper treatment. Thesepollutants cause physical, chemical and biological pollution of natural waterresource, and it has become public concern in all parts of the world (Schwarzenbachet al. 2010).

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