The use of maize tassel as an agricultural by-product to ameliorate heavy metals in contaminated groundwater

The presence of heavy metals in drinking water usually tends to pose some adverseeffects to the consumers. It is in the light of this that maize tassel which is usually anagricultural by product was used to remove mercury arsenic, manganese and lead fromcontaminated water. Maize tassel was milled into fine powder. A laboratory simulatedcontamination of the above mentioned metals was prepared to a concentration of 2.000 mg/L.Groundwater contaminated samples were also obtained and run through 20.0g of thepowdered maize tassel at specific time steps of 0, 15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes respectively. Thewater that drained out of the tassel was then analyzed for the amount of metals remaining init using Shimadzu Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer model AA6300. Theconcentrations of arsenic, manganese lead and mercury in the laboratory simulated solutionafter it had passed through the maize tassel for a period of 60 minutes was 0.001 mg/L, 0.005mg/L, 0.203 mg/L and 0.020 mg/L respectively. The concentrations of arsenic, manganese, leadand mercury in the contaminated groundwater after passing through the tassel was 0.0005mg/L, 0.0021 mg/L, 0.050 mg/L and 0.025 mg/L respectively.