{"id":144137,"date":"2014-02-07T16:24:11","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T18:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=144137"},"modified":"2014-02-07T16:24:11","modified_gmt":"2014-02-07T18:24:11","slug":"green-filter-removes-metal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/green-filter-removes-metal\/","title":{"rendered":"Green filter removes metal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The powder from leaves of the castor oil plant (<i>Ricinus communis<\/i>) has been successfully used as a filter to remove heavy metals from industrial wastewater.\u00a0 The experiment was carried out at the Biosciences Institute of the Universidade Estadual Paulista (IB-Unesp) in the city of Araraquara. \u201cThe castor oil plant is rich in protein, which is why it is used in animal feed.\u00a0 When we analyzed these proteins, we thought about using them as a filter and it ended up working,\u201d says Gustavo Castro, professor at IB-Unesp and coordinator of the study that also included researchers from the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS).\u00a0 \u201cThe plant\u2019s dried ground leaves, after being washed in water and alcohol, were able to adsorb cadmium, lead, mercury, copper and zinc,\u201d explains Castro, who published a scientific article on the experiment in the July 2013 issue of the journal <i>Applied Surface Science<\/i>.\u00a0 In this case, the adsorption process means that the metals are retained on the castor oil plant leaf surface through a chemical reaction.\u00a0 The new filter\u2019s only requirement is that the pH of the water be six, which is easily achieved through the use of chemicals.\u00a0 Besides being a simple lost-cost material, it can also be re-used up to 18 times, and since it is organic, it is also easy to dispose of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leaf powder used as a filter to remove heavy metals from industrial wastewater","protected":false},"author":475,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[168],"tags":[213,259],"coauthors":[785],"class_list":["post-144137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technoscience","tag-botany","tag-chemistry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144137"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=144137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}