Evaluation of Treatment Systems for the Removal of Arsenic from Groundwater

Microbial fuel cell coupled Fenton oxidation for the cathodic degradation of emerging contaminants from wastewater: Applications and challenges

Urbanization and industrialization have resulted in the escalation of the occurrence of emerging contaminants (EC) in the wastewater and ultimately to the receiving water bodies due to their bio-refractory nature. The presence of ECs in the water bodies adversely affects all three domains of life, viz. bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes, and eventually the ecosystem. Fenton oxidation is one of the most suitable method that is capable of degrading a variety of ECs by employing a strong oxidizing agent in the form of •OH. The coupling of Fenton oxidation with microbial fuel cell (MFC) offers benefits, such as low-cost, minimal requirement of external energy, and in-situ generation of oxidizing agents. The resulting system, termed as bio-electro-Fenton MFC (BEF-MFC), is capable of degrading the ECs in the cathodic chamber, while harvesting bioelectricity and simultaneously removing oxidizable organic matter from wastewater in the anodic chamber. This review discusses the applications of BEF-MFC for the treatment of dyes, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and real complex wastewaters. Additionally, the effect of operating conditions on the performance of BEF-MFC are elaborated and emphasis is also given on possible future direction of research that can be adopted in BEF-MFC in the purview of up-scaling.

Removal of arsenic and iron removal from drinking water using coagulation and biological treatment

Effects of biological activated carbon (BAC), biological aerated filter (BAF), alum coagulation and Moringa oleifera coagulation were investigated to remove iron and arsenic contaminants from drinking water. At an initial dose of 5 mg/L, the removal efficiency for arsenic and iron was 63% and 58% respectively using alum, and 47% and 41% respectively using Moringa oleifera. The removal of both contaminants increased with the increase in coagulant dose and decrease in pH. Biological processes were more effective in removing these contaminants than coagulation. Compared to BAF, BAC gave greater removal of both arsenic and iron, removing 85% and 74%, respectively. Longer contact time for both processes could reduce the greater concentration of arsenic and iron contaminants. The addition of coagulation (at 5 mg/L dosage) and a biological process (with 15 or 60 min contact time) could significantly increase removal efficiency, and the maximum removal was observed for the combination of alum and BAC treatment (60 min contact time), with 100% and 98.56% for arsenic and iron respectively. The reduction efficiency of arsenic and iron reduced with the increase in the concentration of dissolved organics in the feedwater due to the adsorption competition between organic molecules and heavy metals.

Biological filtration for removal of arsenic from drinking water

The main objective of the study was to find a suitable iron to arsenic ratio in water to reduce arsenic to 5 microg/L or lower through sand filtration. Experiments were conducted by varying the quantity of iron(II) while keeping the arsenic concentration at 100 microg/L. A mixture of iron (II) and arsenic at different ratios (10:1, 20:1, 30:1 and 40:1) was pumped to the sand filters in a down flow mode and effluent arsenic and iron were analyzed. It was found that a ratio of iron to arsenic of 40:1 was necessary to ensure an effluent arsenic concentration of 5 microg/L or lower. Iron in the filtrate was found to be below 0.1 mg/L at all times.

Adsorption of arsenate on untreated dolomite powder

Raw dolomite powder was evaluated for its efficiency in adsorbing As(V) from water. An experimental setup comprised of a fluidized dolomite powder bed was used to assess the impact of various test variables on the efficiency of removal of As(V). Test influents including distilled water (DW), synthetic groundwater (SGW) and filtered sewage effluent (FSE) were employed to assess the effect of influent parameters on the adsorption process and the quality of the effluent generated. Dolomite exhibited good As(V) removal levels for distilled water (>92%) and synthetic ground water (>84%) influents at all initial As(V) concentrations tested (0.055-0.600 ppm). Breakthrough of dolomite bed occurred after 45 bed volumes for DW and 20 bed volumes for SGW influents with complete breakthrough taking place at more than 300 bed volumes. As(V) removal from FSE influents was relatively unsuccessful as compared to the DW and SGW influents. Partial removal in the order of 32% from filtered sewage effluent at initial concentration of 0.6 mg/L started at 75 bed volumes and gradually stopped at 165 bed volumes. Varying degrees of As(V) adsorption capacities were observed by the different test influents employed, which indicate that the adsorption of As(V) is adversely affected by competing species, mainly sulfates and phosphates present in the influent. The adsorptive behavior of dolomite was described by fitting data generated from the study into the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models. Both models described well the adsorption of dolomite. The average isotherm adsorptive capacity was determined at 5.02 mug/g. Regeneration of the dolomite bed can be achieved with the use of caustic soda solution at a pH of 10.5.