Treatment of High Fluoride Drinking Water Using Bioadsorbent

摘要

Recent surveys carried out to investigate the quality of groundwater in India indicated that some areas in the Dry Zone have the fluoride problem in endemics proportions. In these studies, it is clearly revealed that more than 60 percent of drinking water wells had fluoride levels exceeding 1.5 mg/L in the fluoride rich areas. Therefore, a technique for the defluoridation of fluoride-rich waters is necessary. This study describes the development of low cost effective adsorbent for the removal of dissolved fluoride in water using Phyllanthus emblica. The batch adsorption study was applied to analyze the defluoridating efficiency by varying contact time, adsorbent dose, adsorbate concentration, adsorbent particle size and presence of co-anions at neutral pH. Prepared adsorbent shows enhanced removal of fluoride by 82.1% at equilibrium contact time of 75 minutes. This study is a step in developing a general platform suitable for producing potable water that also specifically addresses the problem of fluoride removal.