SYNTHESIS, CHARACTERIZATION AND ANALYTICAL APPLICATIONS OF ZnO-A1203 NANOCOMPOSITES

Abstract

Water is the main component of earth's ecosystem and an extremely important commodity for the survival of flora and fauna including human beings. Therefore water is considered as nectar for all of us. The total quantity of water on the earth is about 1357.5 million cubic kilometres (M km) covering almost 70% of earth's surface. Around 97% of this water is in oceans which is saline water. Thus, only about 37.5 M km3 is fresh water. Out of this about 8.5 M km3 is liquid and the remaining is in the frozen state as glaciers and ice caps. Together the ocean and ice tie up more than 99% of the total water, and both sources are generally not suitable for human use because out of reach due to its location (ice caps and glaciers) and salinity (seawater). Thus, the amount of water for which all people, animals and plants on earth compete is much less than 1% of the total [I]. The quality of our water resources is deteriorating day by day rapidly due to geometrical growth of world population, civilization and industrialization. Our fixed fraction of fresh water is being polluting continuously by point sources and non-point sources. The main sources of water contaminations are domestic. industrial and agricultural activities [2]. Some other environmental activities and geological changes are also responsible for polluting surface water, especially ground water. More than one thousand pollutants are present in water and these include inorganic, organic and biological contaminants