Assessment of dissolved zinc removal using new sorbent materials

Abstract

The pollution of water supply sources by these metals has a wide variety of severe adverse health effects resulting from a chronic exposure to concentrations above acceptable standards, namely the potential carcinogenic effect of these pollutants confirmed by many epidemiologic studies. Since heavy metals removal from raw water is often the only viable option to obtain safe drinking-water, it is pertinent to globally intensify research efforts. Reactive filtration using natural sorbent materials constitutes a promising and suitable process for drinking water treatment as a suitable alternative to the conventional sand porous media, due to the their additional sorptive. Additionally, the use of natural materials abundant in the region as a by-product from regional industrial activity enhances the sustainability of these emerging treatment solutions. This work presents results and a few conclusions based on a laboratorial study performed to evaluate the efficiency of zinc removal from potable water using a pine bark media under different experimental conditions for relevant hydraulic and physic-chemical parameters. Langmuir and linear isotherms were successfully used to describe the sorption equilibrium data. The obtained experimental results allowed to establish sorption kinetics and showed removal efficiencies higher than 95% during the first month of the operation.