The underlying hypothesis was that nano-enabled hydroxyapatite could be fabricated and used to efficiently and inexpensively remove fluoride from natural waters. Specifically, the goal was to demonstrate that nano-sized hydroxyapatite could be synthesized into nitrate selective strong-base ion exchange resin or other porous material at room temperatures. The new hybrid material was characterized by X-ray powder diffraction, gravimetric analysis, scanning electron microscopy, specific surface area (Brunauer–Emmett–Teller method) and pore size distribution (Barrett–Joyner–Halenda method) analyses. Pseudo-equilibrium sorption tests were conducted under realistic conditions to assess the sorption capacity of the nano-enabled hydroxyapatite media. The solubility of hydroxyapatite was also monitored to assess the stability of the material in realistic water matrices. The preliminary results suggest that fluoride removal by commercial nanosized hydroxyapatite is energetically favorable reaction with Freundlich sorption intensity parameter 1/n ≈ 0.36 and sorption capacity qo ≈ 4.6 mg F/g dry media under pseudo-equilibrium conditions at pH = 8.1 ± 0.2 in contaminant-only water with initial concentration Co ~ 12 mg F/L.

Nano-enabled hydroxyapatite based media for removal of fluoride from water

256th National Meeting (2018)

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