Soil enrichment with heavy metals plays a significant role in soil pollution which led towards buildup/accumulation of heavy metals in edible crops. This situation causes severe threats to sustainability of ecosystem and humans health. Bioavailability of heavy metals can be restricted by the...

Energy demand is increasing all over the world, and to fulfill this need, more energy is required to be produced. Coal power plants produce around 39% of energy, but during energy production, these coal power plants also generate waste in the form of coal fly ash (CFA). The reuse of CFA is the only solution to control this waste; fly ash can be used in different products. Therefore, this study utilizes CFA with rubber as filler materials in the rubber industry. There are different techniques (such as nozzle design technology, air classifier, and optimization of CFA to convert crushed fly ash into valuable microparticles. Treated CFA is applied to produce medium voltage insulated cables and fire resistance cables with different kinds of rubber, such as styrene–butadiene and Ethylene–propylene. The study found that by applying CFA in insulated cables, the elongation at break increased by 50%, and volume resistance 2.2 × 10¹⁶ Ω·cm, insulation resistance increased 70% by using CFA with magnesium in the recipe of insulated cables. The CFA increased the collection rate of cleaning by 30% using this technology, and product life expectancy increased by 5–20%.

Wastewater is a complex mixture of many pollutants, where the high-risk pollutants are heavy metals (HMs) in industrial wastewater due to their difficult removal. In this study, the waste CFA was used as the main raw material for production of new innovated flocculants porous particles by modification of coal fly ash (CFA) using a multi-step base–acid–base (NaOH–HCl–NaOH) modification method. The morphological structure and elemental composition of the prepared MCFA were analyzed through characterization analysis, i.e., SEM, EDX, FT-IR, BET, XPS, and XRD. Results found that the surface area of the flocculant particles of MCFA was increased from 5.241 to 32.011 m²/g, which increased the adsorption process of HMs (Mn²⁺, Cu²⁺, Ni²⁺, and Pb²⁺). The maximum removal efficiencies (Re %) of MCFA for Mn²⁺, Cu²⁺, Ni²⁺, and Pb²⁺ were recorded at 94.26%, 95.88%, 71.04%, and 99.91%, respectively. The Freundlich isotherm model was fitted for the adsorption process, and the maximum adsorption amounts of MCFA for Mn²⁺, Cu²⁺, Ni²⁺, and Pb²⁺ were 558.9219, 0.4341, 210.9737, and 12.1957 mg/g, respectively. Moreover, the kinetic model indicated that physicochemical adsorption occurred between the adsorbate materials and the adsorbent.