FACULTY OF INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY

DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

FIFTH YEAR RESEARCH PROJECT

TITLE: ADSORPTIVE STUDIES OF DEFLUORIDATION OF BOREHOLE

WATER USING PEANUNT HUSKS

STUDENT NAME: MZINGAYE MAKHOSANA MOYO

STUDENT NUMBER: N0182810R

SUPERVISOR: MISS N MGUNI & MR L MGUNI

FIELD OF STUDY: GROUND WATER TREATMENT

YEAR: 2022 TO 2023

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Project Title
Adsorptive Studies of Defluoridation of Borehole Water using Peanut Husk.

Topic

Removal of Fluoride (Defluoridation of Borehole Water).

Aim
 Conducting of experiments to determine the effectiveness of peanut husk on
removal of fluoride from borehole water.

 Removal of Fluoride from borehole water using peanut husk.

 Reducing fluoride concentrations from borehole water.

Introduction
Access to the clean and healthy water is a necessity of life, which not everyone in
Zimbabwe has access to. Ground water is one of the most important sources of drinking
water especially in rural areas and other urban areas where the City Council did not install
treated water pipelines, for example we have areas in Zimbabwe like Mbundane and
Robert Sinyoka, to name just a few. These mentioned areas relies on ground water from
boreholes for their day to day life. Ground water before much agriculture, industrialization
and rbanization, was much safer compared to now. After the industrial revolution, ground
water has been polluted by many pollutants, with one of them being fluoride (F). F- is one
of the very common elements present over the earth's crust. This element is most
electronegative of all other elements. Increased fluoride intake can cause serious health
hazards implications on humans and animals. Many experiments have been made for the
removal of fluoride from the ground water, process like Precipitation, membrane process,
ion exchange and adsorption have been put to use and many other material adsorbantes
have been tested and conclusions have been made about their capacity of adsorption of
fluoride in water. Now in this project we are going to conduct studies in form of
experiments on the capacity and effectiveness of peanut husk in the adsorption of fluoride
present on ground water (boreholes).

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Statement of the Problem
Most of the rural areas and some urban areas like Mbundane and Robert Sinyoka without
treated water pipelines installed on their areas consume and utilise borehole water which
has high levels of concentration of fluoride, way above the recommended value of 1.5mg/L
by the World Health Organisation. Increased uptake of fluoride causes dental fluorosis, a
condition that changes the appearances of the tooth enamel, skeletal fluorosis a condition
which causes bones of a human being to be weaker than normal with pain and stiffness on
the joints and neurological problems like Autism, brain tumours and learning dissabilities
just to name a few. So this being the identified problem caused by high levels of fluoride in
water, methods like membrane filtration, ion exchange, reverse osmosis and electrolysis
have been proven to remove or reduce the fluoride concentration in water, but they are
very expensive for the poor developing countries like Zimbabwe, so a study for an
alternative cheap solution for reducing fluoride concentrations in water by employing the
peanut husks is needed.

Aim

 To conduct adsorptive studies of defluoridation of underground

water bodied using penut husks.

Research Questions
 How effective are peanut husks in defluoridizing borehole water.

 Adsorptive studies of defluoridation of borehole water.

Objectives
 Studies of defluoridation of borehole water using Peanut Husk.

To Investigating the effectiveness of peanut husk on removal of fluoride from

borehole water.

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  To Exploring the effect of adsorbent (peanut husk) dosage.

 To Investigating Investigate effect of adsorbent on water parameters like pH,

conductivity, Turbidity and alkalinity.

 Investigation the amount of contact time needed to reducing fluoride

concentrations.

Justification of the Study

Zimbabwe at its present state is regarded as an underdeveloped nation mainly beacuse of
the poor industry, infrastructure and health facilities. One of the major things that is lacking
in our country is research which is related to water and waste water treatment and
investments on technologies that may save lives of many Zimbabweans. All of this is due to
the lack of funds and some of the best methods that technology can provide proves to be
more expensive on a larger scale. So the proposed study of defluoridation of borehole
water using peanut husk is going to improve the livelihoods of the general population of
Zimbabwe as it will ensure that they get clean and safe water to drink that is free from high
levels of fluoride that causes serious health hazards. Also the other feasible methods of
defluoridizing have proven to be very expensive for a developing country, so the adsorptive
studies of defluoridation if proven that it is competant and effective, we can clean our
water at very cheap prizes since the peanut husks needed can be acquired for free from
peanut processing industries. And this will also be solving the burning issue of solid waste
management as the solid waste would be put to good use.

Literature Review
Defluoridation involves the removal of fluoride ions in drinking water. Defluoridation
methods may be broadly classified into additive methods and adsorptive methods. Fluoride
is one of the largely plentiful elements occurring in groundwater in Zimbabwe and creates
a major problem if consumed in ground water. Fluoride exists moderately abundantly in
the earth’s crust and enters groundwater through natural procedure, especially soil at the
mountains is particularly likely to be high in fluoride from the weathering and escape of
bed rock with high fluoride content. Low levels of fluoride are essential for humans as it
has beneficial effects on tooth structures an optimal concentration can reduce the
incidence of dental caries. However, intake of more amounts of fluorides can causes dental,
skeletal and a number of skeletal fluorosis. According to the WHO, the maximum acceptable
concentration of fluoride ions in drinking water is 1.5 ppm so that to prevent tooth
problems. Concentration of fluoride below 1.5 ppm also assists in the development of
proper bone structure in humans and animals. However, a dose of fluoride above 1.5 ppm

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increases the severity of tooth mottling and induces the prevalence of osteoporosis and
malformed vertebrae.

Fluorosis, consequential as of excessive intake of fluoride, has no healing and considered as

crippling disease. It is considered that probable source of high fluoride in water is that
during circulation of water in rocks and soils, fluorine is leached out and dissolved in
groundwater. Total fluoride content of groundwater varies greatly depending on the type
of rocks from which they originated. Among the various minerals responsible for high
concentration of fluoride, the Fluro apatite (Ca10 (PO4)6.F2) is important. Fluoride removal
way is based on the addition of chemicals and removal of precipitate of fluoride compounds
as insoluble compounds. In adsorption method, diverse category of adsorbents are being
used for defluoridation and studies has been shown that building materials for removal of
other minerals, dyes and heavy metals among these, instant activated alumina coconut
shell carbon, biogases, chemically activated carbon, bone charcoal, natural zeolites,
hydroxyapatite, burn clay and crushed clay pots, electro dialysis and other low-priced bio-
adsorbants like saw dust, second-hand tea leaves, cow dung have been found to be very
much effective, inexpensive and biodegradable. The activated carbon prepared from
peanut shell has been utilized for the sorption of dye such as ethylene blue and malachite
green.

The different methods used for the removal of excess fluoride from water are:

i.) Precipitation technique

ii.) Adsorption technique

iii.) Ion exchange

iv.) Reverse osmosis

v.) Electrolysis

Adsorptive Technique

One of the most versatile of all the defloridation techniques due to a number of reasons
such as cost, diverse end uses, socio cultural acceptance, regulatory compliance,
environmental benignity and simplicity. For this technique activated alumina, bone char
and clay adsorptionmedia are the most developed.

Adsorptive mechanism

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Adsorption occurs when the particle on the surface and the particle in the adsorbent's bulk
are not in the same environment. Unbalanced forces also known as residual attractive
forces act on the particle on the surface. Due to these forces, the adsorbent's surface
particles attract the adsorbate particles.

The main adsorption mechanism of cellulose on fluoride is due to the electrostatic

attraction between the positively charged cellulose and the negatively charged fluoride ion
thus the physical adsorption is the dominant effect since electrostatic attraction is
classified as physical adsorption.

Peanut Husk

Peanut husk account for about 20% "approximately" of the dried peanut pod by weight,
meaning there is a significant amount of the peanut shell residual that is left behind after
harvesting of the peanut. Increased peanut production and processing leads to the
accumulation of the peanut husks which is not utilized that is either burnt or buried.
Peanut husks are rich in many functional compounds composed of cellulose, hemicellulose
and lignin, it can be utilized in multiple ways. Peanut husks is a good bio-sorbent for the
adsorption of heavy metals from ground water and industrial effluents.

Methodology
Preparation of the powdered husk

1. Peanut husks collected from the Bulawayo CBD market and from local farmers.

2. Washed with distilled water several times to eliminate attached dust and impurities.

3. In addition soluble and coloured compounds are removed from the husks by
washing with boiling water until water is almost colourless.

4. Washed husks is dried and ground in mechanical grinder to form powder.

5. Powder is seperated in size fractions in the range of 200-300ù m micro meters.

6. Then 30g/L of peanut powder is soaked in 0.1M nitric acid for 24 hours, mixture is
filtered and filtered biomass is dried in an oven at 105 C for 6-8 hours.

Defloridation Technique

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Batch adsorption study is to be employed.

Adsorption Isotherms

In order to get additional information about the fluoride adsorption characteristics,

experimental data of equilibrium isotherm for fluoride ions adsorption by the adsorbent
are to be modelled using the Freundlich and Langmuir isortherms.

Time Table

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 PROJECT TIME PLAN
19-May 8-Jul 27-Aug 16-Oct 5-Dec 24-Jan 15-Mar

Research and project 20

overview

literature review 30

Experiments 61

Writing 32

Conclusion 15

Final draft 32

References
Sarkar M, Banerjee A, Pramanick PP (2006) Kinetics and Mechanism of Fluoride Removal
using Laterite. Ind Eng Chem Res 45: 5920-5927. 18.

Mohan SV, Ramanaiah SV, Rajkumar B, Sarma PN (2007) Biosorption of fluoride from
aqueous phaseonto algal Spirogyra and evaluation of adsorption kinetics. Bioresource
Technol 98: 1006-1011. 19

Kamble SP, Jagtap S, Labhsetwar NK, Thakare D, Godfrey S, et al. (2007) Defluoridation of
drinking water using chitin, chitosan and lanthanummodified chitosan. Chem Eng J 129:
173-180. 20.

Badusha GS (2000) A study on color removal from reactive dye wastes by chemical bio-
composite for water Treatment. Optim Fluoride Removal Fluorine Chem 8: 718-726. 21.

Weber TW, Chakravorti RK (1974) Pore and solid diffusion models for fixed bed absorbers.
AIChE Journal 20: 228. 22.

Rao M, Bhole AG (2000) Removal of chromium using low cost adsorbents. J Am Environ
Microbiol 27: 291-296. 23.
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Fawell J, Bailey K, Chilton J, Dahi E, Fewtrell L, et al. (2006) Fluoride in Drinking water.
WHO and IWA Publishing London, UK. 24.

Runping H, Yuanfeng W, Weihong Y, Weihua Z, Jie S, et al. (2007) Biosorption of fluoride

from aqueous phase onto algal Spirogyra and evaluation of adsorption kinetics. Biores ource
Technol 98: 1006-1011

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