THE USE OF SOME NATURAL ADSORBENTS TO MINIMIZE THE ENVIRONMENTA POLLUTANTS IN POULTARY RATIONS

Abstract

Mycotoxins are secondary metabolic products from moulds belonging in particular to the Aspergillas, Penicillium and Fusarium genera. More than 300 secondary metabolites have been identified although only around 30 have true toxic properties which are of some concern. Toxicogenic moulds may develop under all climatic conditions on any solid or liquid supports as soon as nutritional substances and moisture are present, hence the wide variety of contaminated foodstuff substrates. These toxins are found as natural contaminants in many feedstuffs of plant origin, especially cereals but also fruits, hazelnuts, almonds, seeds, fodder and foods consisting of, or manufactured from, these products and intended for human or animal consumption. Mycotoxins are small and quite stable molecules which are extremely difficult to remove or eradicate, and which enter the feed chain while keeping their toxic properties. The present study was carried out as two experiments. Bentonite deposits were found reported in different parts of Egypt. In the present study, bentonite clay was selected as a local, cheap and readily available adsorbent for the removal of MB from the aqueous solutions. Natural and acid activated bentonites were characterized using XRD, FTIR and SEM. Adsorption of the dye was studied by batch adsorption experiments.Natural bentonite used is of montmorillonite nature as confirmed by the XRD analysis and chemical composition found in literature. FTIR and SEM analyses confirmed modification of bentonite treated with acid. This led to an increase adsorption capacity of activated bentonite. It was observed that the percentage of dye removal was improved from 75.8% for natural bentonite to reach 99.6% for acid treated bentonite.Results revealed that the adsorption of the dye increases with increasing the pH using natural bentonite. However, there was no effect of solution pH on the removal percentage of MB dye by acid activated bentonite. In addition, they indicated a gradual increase in the percentage removal of MB dye with temperature for natural bentonite. However, no effect was observed when acid activated bentonite was used. An optimum dosage of both natural and acid activated bentonite is 10g L 1.