Consumers purchase point-of-use (POU) devices to further improve the quality of water provided by the tap. As awareness increases of harmful contaminants, an emerging market of advanced POU with claims of removing beyond what a typical activated carbon filter is capable of, such as heavy metals. This study compares four commercially available pitcher filters; two that claim to remove arsenic and hexavalent chromium (A and B) and two without such claims (C and D). Arsenate (As (V)) and hexavalent chromium (Cr (VI)) co-occur in natural geologic formations and are known to have harmful effects on humans when ingested. Pitcher filters A and B had claims of removing both As (V) and Cr (VI) up to 99% with a capacity of nearly 200 gallons. In contrast, pitcher filters C and D had no claims for removal of As(V) and Cr(VI) with a 40-gallon lifespan. A series of experiments were conducted to first determine the efficiency of each filter, then to add the ability or improve removal of As(V) and Cr(VI) in one filter for future design implementations. The first experiment was conducted by treating 100 gallons of spiked tap water (50 ppb for As (V) and 100 ppb for Cr (VI)) with each filter. All four pitcher filters showed low performance, resulting in filter C with the lowest removal percentage of 2% and filter A with the highest percentage 16% for As (V). For Cr (VI) filter C performed the worst with a removal of 5% and filter D had the best performance of 15%. We added the functionality of Pitcher C by embedding a selective ion exchange media, which when nanotized successfully removed Cr (VI) in previous studies. We experimentally evaluated the optimal mass of resin to add to the pitcher. The results demonstrate the limited removal of As(V) and Cr(VI) by the four commercial pitcher filters and show that by adding selective ion exchange media, the POUs can be nano-enabled to effectively remove As(V) and Cr(VI) from water.<br/> <br/>

Low removal of As (V) and Cr (VI) by POU devices until enabled with selective ion exchange media

256th National Meeting (2018)

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