PhD student
National Chung Hsing University
My name is Kamonchanok Huangmee, Ph.D. student in the department of soil and environmental sciences at National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan. I am currently studied on the A Novel Biochar/ZnO Composite for Enhancement of Heavy Metals Removal from Aqueous Solution. The quantity of agricultural waste has been increased all over the world, leading to environmental problems such as air pollution, soil pollution, and groundwater contamination. Therefore, the adopt proper approaches to reduce and reuse agricultural waste is necessary. Biochar, a low-cost material, can be used to remove heavy metals from an aqueous solution. However, the drawbacks of biochar are low adsorption capacity and poor selectivity toward heavy metals. Therefore, a new strategy about large surface area with the porous network with high chemical affinity and functional groups of a new composite of zinc oxide (ZnO) to supported biochar property is discovered. In this study, biochar derived from agricultural waste including pineapple leaves (PLB) and rice husk (RHB) with ZnO (biochar-ZnO) were prepared by the low-temperature hydrothermal method for the removal of Cr(VI), Cu(II), Ni(II), and Zn(II) from wastewater. Overall, the low-cost effective adsorbent from biochar modified with ZnO could be an attractive approach to improve the metal removal efficiency in an aqueous solution. Finally, I think I can get the awards for poster presentation at this time because (1) we make sure that the results can be very useful in future studies for remediation of the wastewater, and (2) effective management of agricultural waste can be achieved by the approach.