GREEN SYNTHESIS OF SILVER NANOPARTICLES FROM CHLORELLA MINUTISSIMA

Abstract

The development of a remediation technique that is environment friendly, efficient and economical for the abatement of heavy metals and dyes will be an important step towards the treatment of water pollutants. For this, silver nanoparticles were synthesized from green algae Chlorella minutissima extract. For the enhancement of silver nanoparticles synthesis, various optimization studies were carried out where different cell disruption techniques (sonication, heating and autoclave), various range of pH (4 to 12) of reaction mixture, various salt and biomass concentration along with contact time were studied. Later, characterization techniques like visual detection and UV-Visible spectroscopy are used for the characterization of silver nanoparticles. In the end, the application of these silver phyconanoparticles were assessed in the remediation of six different heavy metals and 5 different dyes. It is observed that it can remediate more than 96% of EY, MO and EB and more than 87% CV and MB within 5 minutes and 65.18% nickel, 45.83% copper, 42% mercury, 33.84% cadmium within 1 hour and are less efficient in the case of cobalt (4.5%) and chromium (0.5%). These results have shown the potential of silver nanoparticles in the field of remediation of heavy metals and dyes. This project aims to develop a more economical, sustainable and promising tool for the remediation of heavy metals and dyes.