Green Approach for Water Treatment

Abstract

The common first step for water treatment is removing the particulate impurities by coagulation and flocculation. The conventional treatment uses polyvalent salts such as aluminum sulfate, iron (III) chloride, and synthetic polymers as coagulating agents which leads to potential toxicity.  The purpose of this study is to identify environmentally friendly natural products as coagulant agents for water treatment. Four plant seeds (Amaranth, chia, quinoa, and wheat germ), corn cob, orange peel, and avocado peel were tested. Turbidity measurements were conducted with a wireless, portable turbidity sensor. Data was collected on a smartphone. The performance of the turbidity sensor was evaluated by preparation of a calibration curve (r² = 0.9928). Results show that all four plant seeds and avocado peel demonstrated the ability to decrease the turbidity of the water sample. Among the four seeds that were studied, Amaranth and chia were identified as the top two natural coagulant agents. Inter-day and Intra-day studies were performed for the turbidity measurements. The relative standard deviation (RSD) was found to be less than 10%, indicating the method has good precision. The method can serve as a point-of-use water treatment in remote areas of developing countries with limited resources.