Study the Removal of Fluoride from Aqueous Medium by Using Nano-Composites

Tapan K. Rout¹, Reeta Verma², Robert V. Dennis³, Sarbajit Banerjee³

¹Research & Development, Tata Steel Ltd., Jamshedpur, India.
²Department of Environment, Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Mesra, Ranchi, India.
³Department of Chemistry, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA.

DOI: 10.4236/jeas.2015.51004                

Abstract

Endemic fluorosis disease has become a major geo-environmental health care issue caused by fluoride ion. High-efficiency and low-cost materials to uptake fluoride from water have been a chal-lenge for scientists and engineers. Here, we report a low-cost process by utilising low-cost starting materials to develop nanocomposite adsorbents for fluoride uptake from water. Bermuda grass as a starting source material converted into nanocomposite carbon fibers upon heat treatment at 800°C for one hour in Nitrogen atmosphere in the presence of metal oxides. Iron oxide-based nanocomposite (IBNC) is performing high (≈97%) removal of fluoride ion at a contact time of 60 minutes (pH 4) followed by titania-based nanocomposite (TBNC) (≈92%) and micro carbon fiber (≈88%) respectively. The phenomenon of fluoride ion uptake is realised by Freundlich adsorption model, and both adsorption capacity and adsorption intensity for IBNC are higher than those for TBNC and micro carbon fiber.

Keywords

Adsorption, Nano-Oxides, Grafted Carbon Fiber, Thermal CVD, Fluoride

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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