文摘
Fluoride contamination of water is a potential health and environmental hazard worldwide. This study focuses on defluoridation efficiency in aqueous system by novel adsorbents, i.e., calcium impregnated silica (Ca-SiO2) and calcium impregnated silica combined with titanium dioxide (Ca-SiO2-TiO2). Comparative batch study was carried out using both adsorbents Ca-SiO2 and Ca-SiO2-TiO2 for fluoride removal efficiency in different experimental conditions where it was observed that chemically modified Ca-SiO2-TiO2 acted as a better adsorbent for defluoridation than Ca-SiO2. Thus, further batch isotherm and kinetics studies were performed using Ca-SiO2-TiO2. The phenomenon of fluoride ion uptake is realized by Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm model. Langmuir isotherm shows satisfactory fit to the experimental data. The rate of adsorption shows that the pseudo-second-order rate fitted the adsorption kinetics better than the pseudo-first-order rate equation. The mechanism of adsorption process was illustrated by calculating Gibbs free energy, enthalpy and entropy from thermodynamic studies. To further confirm the applicability of the adsorbent, a fixed bed study was carried out in column mode. Thomas and bed-depth-service-time (BDST) model were well-fitted to the experimental results. The optimal operating conditions of defluoridation were found by using response surface methodology (RSM) with the help of Design Expert Software. The maximum percentage of fluoride removal was 92.41% in case of calcium impregnated silica combined with titanium dioxide (Ca-SiO2-TiO2). Thus, it may be concluded that chemically synthesized Ca-SiO2-TiO2 could be used as an environmentally and economically safe adsorbent for defluoridation of waste water.
