Fluoride Removal by Activated Carbon Prepared From Prosopis Cineraria Leaves: A Novel and Cost-Effective Approach for Fluoride Removal from Contaminated Groundwater Using Prosopis Cineraria Leaves

Abstract

Fluoride is the major inorganic ion of halogen family naturally found in groundwater. Fluoride ion in least quantity is an essential chemical ion for normal mineralization of human being bones and formation of dental enamel. Since then noticeable work has been done in disparate parts of world and India to explore the fluoride contaminated water sources and their impacts on human being as well on various animals. The safe limit of fluoride in drinking water is 1.5 mglitre. Groundwater with high fluoride ion concentration is generally has high pH and contains large amount of silica and other chemical ions. In groundwater, the concentration of fluoride ion rely on the geological presence of various ions and chemical and physical characteristics of the aquifer, alkalinity and acidity of the soil and rocks of earth crust, temperature, the porosity ,the action of other chemicals and the depth of tube wells or hand pumps and other water sources. The solution to the problem is removing the excess of fluoride from contaminated groundwater. There are various techniques that are used for the De‐fluoridation purpose. Some of these techniques used are natural ion and Synthetic ion exchange, Precipitation methods, and Activated alumina filters, Reverse osmosis, adsorption and absorption techniques. Some of these are more effective. Predominantly applied technique is absorption either with the biological chemical or physical adsorbents. These bio‐adsorbents have the physical property of adsorbing different type of negative ions like fluoride ion and various metal ions. Here different type of naturally occurring adsorbents are used which have appeared a desirable amount of degradation in Fluoride ion concentration of groundwater samples. In this experimental study, we present a novel cost effective defluoridation method using Prosopis Cineraria leaves charcoal as the adsorbent. The data obtained reveals that Prosopis Cineraria leaves are highly efficient in fluoride ion removal by contaminated ground water.