Adsorción de colorantes sobre tierra de diatomeas. Un trabajo de laboratorio con enfoque ambiental

One of the most urgent concerns in the development of our societies is water management. Being water a scarce resource, it is important that students of different environmentally oriented careers understand wastewater treatment processes as well as their underlying physico-chemical background. Many of them are not chemistry majors, so it is important to develop relatively simple experiments, easy to perform but challenging for discussions, to study crucial chemical phenomena, keeping in mind concrete technological applications. Among the various available water treatment techniques, adsorption is a good teaching example because it is one of the most efficient methods to remove contaminants from wastewater due to its simplicity, low cost and easy operation conditions. We present a simple and inexpensive adsorption experiment, related to water treatment techniques, to show how a natural sorbent such as diatomite can be used to remove dyes from wastewater.