Sustainable Development: Use of Agricultural Waste Materials for Vanillic Acid Recovery from Wastewater

María Dolores Víctor-Ortega, Ana S. Fajardo and Diego Airado-Rodríguez
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María Dolores Víctor-Ortega: Faculty of Sciences, University of Granada, Avda. Fuentenueva s/n, 18071 Granada, Spain
Ana S. Fajardo: Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment, School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-3005, USA
Diego Airado-Rodríguez: Department of Science Education, University of Jaén, Campus Las Lagunillas s/n, 23071 Jaén, Spain

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 5, 1-9

Abstract: The management of agricultural waste is an important issue related to environment protection, as the inappropriate disposal of this waste yields negative effects on the environment. Proper management of industrial effluents is totally aligned with sustainable development goal (SDG) number six “clean water and sanitation”, as well as partially related to other several SDG. In this work, two agricultural waste materials were used for vanillic acid recovery from wastewater. In this scenario, vanillic acid could be considered as both an organic pollutant present in several industrial effluents and a high added-value product when isolated. Therefore, its removal from wastewaters, as well as its recovery and isolation, are very interesting from environmental and economical points of view. Peanut and pistachio shells were studied as no-cost and readily accessible potential adsorbents for the removal and recovery of vanillic acid from aqueous solutions. The evolution of equilibrium isotherms of vanillic acid on both biosorbents was investigated. Three isotherm models (Langmuir, Freundlich, and Temkin) were tested to fit the experimental equilibrium data and compared. The Langmuir model provided the best correlation for vanillic acid biosorption onto both peanut and pistachio shells. Finally, the negative values of ΔG indicated that the biosorption process was spontaneous and thermodynamically favorable for both agricultural waste materials. Accordingly, peanut and pistachio shells were shown to be very efficient low-cost adsorbents, and a promising alternative for vanillic acid recovery from industrial wastewaters.

Keywords: low-cost adsorbents; pistachio shell; peanut shell; biowaste; adsorption technique; value-added product; vanillic acid (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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