Coating polystyrene beads with iron oxide for the adsorption of carbofuran from the water supply

Population growth requires more food production and as a consequence, there is the indiscriminate use of agrochemicals, among them major group are carbamates. At times, runoff of pesticides leads to surface water pollution that serves as a source of public supply. Thus, the presence of these microcontaminants in surface water has become increasingly frequent. The treatment developed in this work uses the principle of adsorption as a technology for the removal of carbamates, more specifically carbofuran. Two methods of coating the polystyrene beads with iron oxide were used to adsorb these microcontaminants from the water. The coating was evaluated through the chemical extraction of iron, analysis by scanning electron microscopy and BET analysis. The metallurgy that presented the best coating was the one that used the ferric chloride. The beads coated by this methodology were used for adsorption tests of carbofuran and showed positive results after verification of the influence of pH on the adsorption process.