Notice of Retraction Removal of Pollutants from Water by Nano-Scale MgO Particles: Feasibility and Disadvantage

Notice of Retraction After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE's Publication Principles. We hereby retract the content of this paper. Reasonable effort should be made to remove all past references to this paper. The presenting author of this paper has the option to appeal this decision by contacting TPII@ieee.org. Nano-scale MgO particles were utilized to remove pollutants from water, and the disadvantage in the application of nano-MgO was also discussed. In comparison to other oxide nanoparticles (ZnO, CuO, Fe2O3 and Al2O3), nano-MgO exhibited better performance in the removal of organic matters and heavy metals (Fe, Mn). In addition, nano-MgO could not remove nitrate and nitrite, but it could decrease the concentration of ammonium by 35%, while limited ammonium could be removed by other oxide nanoparticles in this experiment. Moreover, all kinds of the oxide nanoparticles in this experiment could remove more than 90% of bacteria in the water. On the other hand, the high pH value and the residual nanoparticles may limit the application of nano-MgO. Based on our results, adding Fe2(SO4)3 or Al2(SO4)3 resulted in the initial pH decreasing to 5.0-6.0. However, after that, the pH value increased continually and became more than 8.5 in 1.5 hours. In the reactor with 30 mL or 50 mL of KH2PO4 (1/15 mol/L), although the initial pH exceeded 9.0, the pH could keep stable for several hours. Furthermore, activated carbon was used to reject the nano-MgO in the water. It was shown that the activated carbon could adsorb more than 60% of Mg content in the water, but adsorption capability did not change as its dosage increased from 3 g/L to 15 g/L.