REMOVAL OF FLUORIDE FROM ELECTRONIC INDUSTRIAL EFFLUENT BY RO MEMBRANE SEPARATION

Abstract The electronics industry generates large amounts of fluoride-containing effluents. The objective of this studyis to study the feasibility of applying reverse osmosis (RO) membrane separation to reduce fluoride load to less than 1 kg/d. The effect of transmembrane pressure on the removal of fluoride ion has been investigated in detail, and the design parameters of a small RO separation unit were estimated. The present study indicated that the rejection of fluoride ion is typically higher than 98%, considering that the RO membrane was fully regenerated after each set of experiments. The effect of upstream concentration on the required mechanical pressure was determined by estimating the theoretical osmotic pressure of the feed solution. For industrial effluents, the process developed in this work allows us to reduce the treated volume from 6 m 3 /d to 0.36 m 3 /d without any pretreatment or adding additional compounds. The cost of the designed RO separation plant (€76,000) is much less than that of the conventional treatment (€533/m 3 ) that deals mainly with volumes rather than specific

[1]  R. Schneiter,et al.  Arsenic and fluoride removal from groundwater by reverse osmosis , 1983 .

[2]  G. J. Fink,et al.  Activated alumina for removing fluorides from drinking water. , 1936 .

[3]  T. Matsuura,et al.  Studies on reverse osmosis for water pollution control , 1972 .

[4]  Azza Hafez,et al.  Water type and guidelines for RO system design , 2001 .

[5]  P. Santschi,et al.  Ultrafiltration behavior of major ions (Na, Ca, Mg, F, Cl, and SO4) in natural waters. , 2001, Water research.

[6]  Carlo Vandecasteele,et al.  Removal of pollutants from surface water and groundwater by nanofiltration: overview of possible applications in the drinking water industry. , 2003, Environmental pollution.

[7]  S. Saha.  Treatment of aqueous effluent for fluoride removal , 1993 .

[8]  S. Wasay,et al.  Sorption of fluoride ions from aqueous solutions by a yttrium‐loaded poly(hydroxamic acid) resin , 1995 .

[9]  D. Killedar,et al.  Fluoride adsorption on fishbone charcoal through a moving media adsorber , 1992 .

[10]  R. Simons.  Trace element removal from ash dam waters by nanofiltration and diffusion dialysis , 1993 .

[11]  J. Sandeaux,et al.  Fluoride removal from waters by Donnan dialysis , 1999 .

[12]  A. Kumar,et al.  Integrated biological and physiochemical treatment process for nitrate and fluoride removal. , 2001, Water research.

[13]  J. Sandeaux,et al.  Fluoride removal from diluted solutions by Donnan dialysis with anion-exchange membranes , 1999 .