Browsing by Author "Niyitegeka, Hyacinthe"

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    Fluoride Removal from Water Using Aluminium Modified Activated Carbon Prepared from Khat Catha Edulis Stem
    (Addis Ababa University, 2021-07-10) Niyitegeka, Hyacinthe; Kebede, Shimelis K. (PhD)
    Fluoride is one of the most abundant elements found in Ethiopian groundwater and in many other parts of the world, posing a significant threat to the regions’ groundwater supply. The presence of fluoride above the set limit of 1.5 mg/L in drinking water consumed by humans has resulted in a variety of physical health issues such as dental and skeletal fluorosis. In the Ethiopian Rift Valley, nearly 8 million people drink fluoride-contaminated water. The same problem has been seen in other regions such as the Kenyan and Tanzanian Rift Valleys. The current study describes the preparation of a low-cost adsorbent using aluminium-modified activated carbon prepared from Khat (Catha edulis) stem as well as its adsorption effectiveness for fluoride ion removal from aqueous solution. The fluoride adsorption capacity of the resulting modified adsorbent was experimentally evaluated with batch adsorption experiments in numerous operating conditions, which include pH, adsorbent dose, and fluoride initial concentration. The results showed that the modified activated carbon retained good fluoride performance; with an adsorbent dose of 2.47 g/L, 87.9 % of 2.1 mg/L initial fluoride concentration could be reduced from aqueous solution containing at pH 6.08 in 60 minutes. The adsorbent was applied to real drinking water samples collected from Tube, Wadesha, Dollessa, and Tejitu, and it was discovered that the concentrations of ground water collected from Tube and Wadesha were reduced from 3.67 mg/L and 4.33 mg/L to 1.0 mg/L and 1.28 mg/L, respectively, and are within WHO permissible drinking water limits. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) were used to describe modified activated carbon and investigate the possible adsorption mechanism. The results show that aluminium-modified activated carbon derived from khat (Catha edulis) has a reasonable defluoridating capacity and could be used as an appropriate and effective adsorbent for a longterm solution to the fluoride problem in drinking water with lower fluoride concentrations.