Abstract

Pesticide Mineralization in Water using Silver Nanoparticles

Author(s): G. Manimegalai, S. Shantha Kumar and Chandan Sharma

In recent days, pesticides are widely used for pest control in agriculture and public health, due to which a large part of drinking water is getting contaminated. Due to their wide spread use, they are present in both; surface and ground water. Pesticides comprise different classes, including insecticides, fungicides, herbicides etc. Most of the pesticides are resistant to biodegradation and are found to be carcinogenic even at ppb levels. Surface adsorption, photocatalysis, membrane separation and biodegradation are the conventional methods of pesticide removal. However, these methods are unfavorable because of its time consumption and expensiveness. Nanoparticles can be utilized for the mineralization of pesticides to overcome both of the above mentioned drawbacks. In order to prevent the contamination of nanoparticles in the purified water after mineralization of pesticides, they need to be incorporated on a support. This paper deals with the review of the supported silver nanoparticles in pesticide degradation. Earlier researchers used activated carbon and alumina as a support for silver nanoparticles in pesticide mineralization. However, the polymeric (cellulose acetate) membrane can also be used as support for silver nanoparticles, since it is economical, reusable, portable, environmental friendly and it requires no operating cost.