VAISHALI BHANDARI, JOGINDER SINGH AND ANJUVAN SINGH
Abstract
The human body is very smart in responding to any external change in a variety of biological ways. These days’ polymer scientists are actively involved in developing smart polymer that can be universally applied to any kind of problems occurring in nature. These are called as smart or intelligent polymer as hydrogel. Hydrogels are ‘smart’ or ‘intelligent’ in the sense; they can recognize to any external stimuli and respond by displaying changes in their physical or chemical behavior. Some hydrogels undergo reversible large changes in swelling that are mediated by external stimuli such as changes in pH, temperature, ionic strength, solvent type, electric and magnetic elds, light, and the presence of chelating species. Water coming from textile industries contains dyes which cause potential hazard to the environment and therefore it must be removed from water. There are numerous methods like physical, chemical and biological treatments employed for the removal of dyes from waste water. Biological methods include biosorption, aerobic/anaerobic degradation and chemical methods as ozonisation, photo catalytic reactions and physical methods like adsorption, ion exchange and filtration are used for removal of pollutants from water. Out of the different types of method employed adsorption is found to be very effective and cheap method used for removal of dyes. Smart polymers hydro gel has wide application in the biomedical field as drug delivery, textile industry and in removal of dyes from water.