Use of Sericulture Subproducts As Adsorbent and Absorbent of Water Pollutants

Use Of Sericulture Subproducts As Adsorbent And Absorbent
Of Water Pollutants

Abstract: In this work the use of silkworm (Bombyx mori) pupa and bisu, which are subproducts in the industry of
sericulture, were investigate to remove water pollutans. This study was divided in two parts: the first one, the silkworm
pupa was tested as adsorbent of acid red 14 dye, and the second one, the bisu was tested as absorbent of crude oil, motor
oil 20w 50 and kerosene. The adsorbent removed the dye in water solution where the final concentration was
M,
otherwise, the results in the assays with bisu had a sorption capacity between 30 and 60 percent for the different
hydrofobic water pollutants. In conclusion this materials shows a high performance as a low cost for bioremediation in
contaminated water.
Keywords: Silkworm pupa, bisu, crude oil, acid red 14, kerosene, motor oil.
1. INTRODUCTION
The first records in sericulture come from China and date from about 2600BC. Historically the greatest sales
of silk were from China to Japan where it was used to make clothing until now (Hill [1]), in Colombia the
production of silk is in three regions: Valle del Cauca, Risaralda and Cauca, where the companies in
sericulture consist in farms with 20 employees (Red Andina de la Seda [2]). In order to realize a great goal of
silkworm industry in this days, we must meet new challenges (Kai [3]), for example, bioremediation is a
technology that uses microorganism, fungi, plants or animals to treat contaminants through natural
mechanism (EPA [4]), Colombia doesn’t use this technology in his industries, so is necessary work in this
field as a way to develop sustainable process and solve environmental issues, because the poor treatment of
wastewater in the industry, is a serious environmental problem due to their potential human toxicity, one of
the cases are oil spill, this can happen in many places when oil is being transported by oil tankers or through
pipelines (Chang et. al, [5]). Also, textile industries discharge to the surrounding environment visual
pollutants without any further treatment, they also cause extensive toxicity to the aquatic and other forms of
life (Khan [6]).
Silkworms go through complete metamorphosis in 4 stages: egg, larva, pupa and butterfly (Schaffer [7]), we
are interested in pupal stage, is an inactive stage in life cycle of the silkworm (Singh and Saratchandra [8]),
where the cuticle is made of chitin a natural cationic polysaccharide (Zhang et al, [9]), The amino acid nature
of the pupa provided a reasonable capability for dye removal (Noorozi [10]) Otherwise, the bisu is most of the
pierced cocoons or very dirty cocoons of the silkworm are discarded as industrial wastes, and can be obtained
as a low cost material (Moriwaki et al, [11]).
There is much research that involve silkworm like develop vaccines for animals (Otsuki et al, [12]), reducing
blood glucose level (Cong et al, [13]), control of lipids in Wistar rats (Mentang et al, [14]) and studies of his
mechanical properties (Zhang et al, [15]), the main objective of this work is use the silkworm subproducts for
removal water pollutants.
2. METHODOLOGY
Determination of absorbent capacity: the bisu was dried in an oven at 107 ° C for 120 minutes, was
arranged in arrays of layers (10 layers, 20 layers, 30 layers) which is then pressed at 1 ton per square inch,
once have compacted cut into pieces of 5x5mm and 2x2cm for absorption tests. Three immiscible
contaminants in water were selected: kerosene, crude oil and motor oil (20w-50), the tests are performed at
different times (2, 5 and 10 min), measured the weight of pollutant removed in order to evaluate absorbent
capacity of each array by weight difference, defined as the removal rate ratio of the mass of pollutant removed
and the initial mass.
Determination of adsorbent capacity: the cocoon is immersed in boiling water to remove the pupa, which is
then dried at 110 ° C for 35 minutes; pupa then ground to a fine powder. Eight solutions of organic dye with
four different concentrations are prepared, and the absorbance of each was measured by the
spectrophotometer. Two tests were conducted, the first with the same retention time (2 hours) by adding 0.02
g of pupa and said next time varying (15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes) by adding 0.01 g. Subsequently, the
solutions are filtered to remove the pupa and again used the spectrophotometer to measure the absorbance of
the filtered solution.
3. RESULTS
Is observed for the absorbent material is stable in water and less dense than the latter, remaining in the surface
and thereby facilitating the absorption of contaminants.
The removal percentage varies with the number of layers and the contact time, the latter being proportional to
maximum absorbency after 10 minutes. Also the arrangement of 30 layers had the best performance in the
absorption of the three pollutants with removal percentage: 70.1%, 50.2%, 37.6% for crude oil (Fig. 1),
kerosene, and motor oil respectively in a time of 10 minutes. Additionally, a blank test was determined that
the absorption of water by the material is less than 1%.

The dye solutions, by adding the same amount of adsorbent at different times can be observed gradually
decreases of the color intensity. Also the concentration of the dye tends to drop at the same point
regardless of the initial concentration . In treated solutions pupa traces which could not be separated
by filtration was observed. The results are a sample of the absorbing power of the pupa, where a precedent for
future investigations brand.

4. CONCLUSIONS
The properties observed both bisu and pupa show that an application can give an application
to these raw materials that are treated as waste currently. The bisu works efficiently as a sorbent for oil,
kerosene, and motor oil, polluting high-impact environmental levels. Besides the pupa serves as adsorbent of
organic dyes dissolved in water, therefore, could become exploited in the treatment of effluents from the silk
industry and others where these pollutants are found.
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