Waste tea as absorbent for removal of heavy metal present in contaminated water.

The goal of this study is to investigate the efficacy of tea-derived absorbents for the removal of heavy metals from contaminated water. For this, absorbents were prepared from milk tea (MT) waste, Ilam tea (IT) waste, and various types of tea leaves, including Immature (IML), mature (ML), and old leaves (OL). The characterization of the absorbents revealed distinct physical and chemical properties from X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), with varying degrees of effectiveness observed across different absorbent types.