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Groundwater purification by membrane technology

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Abstract

Hyperfiltration and nanofiltration membranes were tested with different water matrices for the removal of excess fluoride from underground water. Initially, the experiments were done with synthetic samples prepared by adding known amounts of sodium fluoride and calcium chloride in distilled water. The effect of feed water composition, pH, temperature of feed water, operating pressure, and feed water flow rate on separation efficiency of both types of membrane was studied by varying one parameter at a time and keeping all other parameters constant. Thus, the optimum operating conditions for the process were determined and after that ground water samples collected from three villages of district Gurgaon, Haryana, India (Farukhnagar, Wazirpur, and Mevka) were treated under optimum operational conditions. The mass transfer coefficient and membrane parameters were estimated for each data point using two-parameter model (Film theory and Solution-diffusion model) to study the concentration polarization on membrane surface. The nanofiltration membrane showed high percentage rejection of bivalent ions when compared to monovalent ions in a binary system. But in multicomponent system, when fluoride and calcium coexisted, the removal of fluoride was comparable to calcium removal because of the low solubility product of calcium fluoride. The results with RO membrane revealed that it removes practically all the ions present in water at high pressure, which need to be passed through a lime column to remineralize the water, to make it suitable for drinking purposes, whereas by running the system at low pressure which will further reduce the cost of operation, rejection percentage goes down to get permeate of required quality.

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Abbreviations

C :

Molar density of solution (kmol/m3)

D ij :

Coordinate direction perpendicular to the membrane (m)

D SW :

Diffusion coefficient (m2/s)

J S :

Solute volume flux (m3/m2 s)

J W :

Solvent volume flux (m3/m2 s)

k :

Mass transfer coefficient (m/s)

K A :

Pure water permeability coefficient (kmol/m2 kPa)

K B :

Solute transport parameter (m/s)

N i :

Molar flux of component, i (kmol/m2 s)

P :

Applied pressure across the membrane (bar)

Δπ:

Osmotic pressure difference across the membrane (bar)

R :

Observed rejection (%)

R*:

True rejection (%)

δ:

Thickness of concentration boundary layer (m)

A:

Solute

B:

Solvent

S:

Salt

W:

Water or solvent

1:

Feed solution

2:

Boundary layer solution

3:

Permeate solution

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Rural Development and Technology, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India

    Meenakshi Arora & R. C. Maheshwari

  2. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

    Meenakshi Arora

Authors
  1. Meenakshi Arora
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  2. R. C. Maheshwari
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Correspondence to Meenakshi Arora.

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Arora, M., Maheshwari, R.C. Groundwater purification by membrane technology. Environmentalist 31, 20–25 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10669-010-9287-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10669-010-9287-4

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