Assessment of urban river water quality and developing strategies for phosphate removal from water and wastewaters: Integrated monitoring and mitigation studies

摘要

In this work, the water quality status of the surface water that lies around the Karamana River basin, Trivandrum urbanarea, was studied on the basis of the water quality index (WQI) method. The eutrophic condition of the basin is revealed,and proper mitigation strategy was adopted for the removal of phosphate species using pillared clay materials. Propersampling was carried out in the urban rivers, and various physico-chemical parameters for evaluating the quality ofwater were analysed. WQI values obtained for these riverine systems are in the range 317.7–3005.1, indicating that thewater is not suitable without treatment for any domestic activities. Also, phosphate ions in the range 1.98–20.52 mg/Lreflect the dominance of phosphate species in surface water. A proper mitigation strategy was adopted for the selectiveremoval of phosphate ions using adsorption technique by using zirconium-pillared bentonite clay (ZPBC) prepared bythe stirring–ageing technique. The batch adsorption experiment performed on simulated phosphate solution showsthat for 2.0 g/L of ZPBC a maximum phosphate adsorption capacity of 35.71 mg/g was achieved in 30 min at pH 3.0.The data obtained were used to study models in kinetics and isotherm. The reusability of spent ZPBC for five continuouscycles without major loss in adsorption capacity using 0.025 M Na2CO3extractant was proved from the desorptionstudy. A single-stage reactor was also designed from the isotherm data and proved to be effective. The applicability ofthe adsorbent towards phosphate anions was successfully checked in the laboratory using surface water collected andfound that the complete removal of phosphate was achieved using 6.0, 8.0 and 10.0 g/L of ZPBC.