Fluoride Action Network

Modeling defluoridation of real-life groundwater by a green adsorbent aluminum/olivine composite: Isotherm, kinetics, thermodynamics and novel framework based on artificial neural network and support vector machine

Source: Journal of Environmental Management 302(Part A):113965. | October 30th, 2021
Location: International
Industry type: Water Treatment

Highlights

  • AOC can efficiently remove fluoride from real-life groundwater up to 87.5%.
  • Freundlich and Elovich models demonstrated adsorption isotherm and kinetics.
  • Adsorption thermodynamic reflects spontaneous, endothermic, physisorption reaction.
  • Benchmarking sorption process of synthetic and real-life water for field simulation.
  • Neural network performed as better prediction model than support vector machine.

Abstract

The kinetic, isotherm, and thermodynamics of adsorptive removal of fluoride from the real-life groundwater was evaluated to assess the applicability of a green adsorbent, aluminum/olivine composite (AOC). The isotherm and kinetics were demonstrated by the Freundlich and Elovich model indicating significant surface heterogeneity of AOC in favouring the fluoride sorption. The fluoride removal efficiency of AOC was achieved as 87.5% after 240 min of contact time. The diffusion kinetic model exhibited that both the intra-particle and film diffusion together control the rate-limiting step of fluoride adsorption. A negative value of ?G0 (?19.919 kJ/mol) at 303 K confirmed the spontaneous adsorption reaction of fluoride, and its endothermic nature was supported by the negative value of ?H0 (39.504 kJ/mol). A novel framework for a predictive model by artificial neural network (ANN), and support vector machine (SVM) considering the real and synthetic fluoride-containing water was developed to assess the efficiency of adsorbent under different scenarios. ANN model was observed to be statistically significant (RMSE: 1.0955 and R2: 0.9982) and the proposed method may be instrumental in a similar area for benchmarking the synthetic and real-life samples. The low desorption potential of the spent adsorbent exhibited safe disposal of sludge and the secondary-pollutant-free treated water by the efficient and green adsorbent AOC enhanced the field-scale applicability of the green technology.