Pollution Control Approaches

**69**

**Chapter 4**

**Abstract**

**1. Introduction**

wastewater treatment.

Treatment

*Luqman Ali Shah and Sher Ali Khan*

Polymer Hydrogels for Wastewater

The pollution of water resources turns into a worldwide problem because of the indiscriminate disposal of pollutants both organic and inorganic in nature. It stays hard to manner or control the purification of wastewater before it flows to water reservoirs. The growing interest in the improvement and application of novel hydrogels in wastewater remedy is due to its particular chemical characteristics along with hydrophilicity, sensitivity, and functionality. Hydrogels exhibit superior overall performance inside the adsorptive removal of a wide variety of aqueous pollutants along with heavy metals, nutrients, and toxic dyes. In this chapter, we are focusing on the behavior and importance of the hydrogels used so far for the removal of both organic and inorganic pollutants from wastewater. With this contribution, we will be able to elaborate the answer for why these hydrogels are superior than other materials used for the same purpose. More attention is given to the removal of heavy metal ions from wastewater using different hydrogel systems.

**Keywords:** hydrogels, hydrophilicity, sensitivity, heavy metal ions, water treatment

In recent times, the fast growth of industries has caused critical troubles within

Generally, the adsorption process is broadly categorized in chemisorption and physisorption. Chemisorption also called chemical adsorption involves the formation of a chemical bond between adsorbate and adsorbent and therefore behaves as an irreversible system. Physisorption or physical adsorption takes place through physical interaction like hydrogen bonding, van der Waals, and hydrophobic interactions between adsorbate and adsorbent and acts in a reversible manner. Physical

the natural environment. The effluents of many industries that include paint industries, metal plating, food industries, pharmaceutical industries, and battery production, which comprise heavy metallic ions, dyes, and organic materials, are discharged without delay into water bodies and cause water pollution. These pollutants above the permissible limit cause serious effects on human beings and other terrestrial and aquatic animals. These substances penetrate and accumulate inside the bodies through food chains [1]. For the remediation and purification of wastecontaminated water, a number of different strategies were used, which include chemical precipitation [2], ion exchange [3], biological methods [4], membrane separation [5], reverse osmosis [6], coagulation and flocculation [7], catalysis [8–11], photodegradation [12], and adsorption [13, 14]. Among these strategies, adsorption is considered a cheap, quick, and environmental friendly process for

## **Chapter 4**
