Fluoride

Introduction

Fluoride contamination of groundwater is a major, well-known health concern, that still does not have any highly effective or sustainable technologies to remedy it. The World Health Organization suggest the Nalgonda method, but this techniques has several major flaws including a treatment efficiency that is limited to only 70 percent, and a large dose of aluminum sulfate, which causes sludge disposal problems. Instead, we intend on using Polyaluminum Chloride (PACl) as a coagulant to which the fluoride can both adsorb to and coprecipitate with. Our objective for this semester is to build the physical system with a sand filter to trap the coagulant and being the adsorption and coprecipitation.

 The goals of the Fluoride Team is to design and create the optimal system for adsorbing and coprecipitating out fluoride from groundwater.

Goals

The overall objective for the Spring 2015 team are to design and build the physical filtering system that will trap the fluoride from the groundwater flow. With this system, we plan to develop a measurement technique that can be connected to ProCoDa that will give us real time performance of the fluoride removal. Once we have the system built, we will develop a method to contaminate water with fluoride to a level comparable to groundwater. Once we have done this, we will design a sand column experiment that will help us find the optimal PACl dosage for fluoride removal. Finally, we will determine the best disposal methods for contaminated waste that is generated by experimentation.

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