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A low-cost method has been developed by researchers to remove toxic Chromium from wastewater of industries such as leather tanning and electroplating by using “sunlight” as catalyst in combination with microfluidic technology. 

Toxicity of hexavalent chromium is a serious concern and as per reports by WHO the tolerable concentrations of hexavalent and trivalent chromium in drinking water are limited to 0.05 mg/L and 5 mg/L. Thus, it becomes imperative to reduce this hexavalent form of chromium to the trivalent form.

Several chemical and physiochemical methods, such as ion exchange, adsorption, and bacterial and chemical reduction, have been employed for the removal of Cr (VI). Most of these techniques are costly, with low removal efficiencies of Cr (VI).

Research group from Institute of Nano Science and Technology (INST), Mohali, an autonomous institute of Department of Science and Technology has developed a new technique of removing toxic Cr(VI) ions by utilizing sunlight for the catalytic process in combination with microfluidic technology for the conversion of the toxic hexavalent form of chromium to a less toxic trivalent form.

They used a process called continuous flow photoreduction and validated this process in wastewater using TiO2 nanoparticles with the help of a smartphone based colorimetric technique.

It is a cost effective and uses renewable energy.,

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