Abstract
Ammonium removal from drinking water to protect human and environmental health is one of the major global concerns. This study evaluates the performance of Purolite C100E, a commercial cation exchange resin, in eliminating ammonium in synthetic and real contaminated groundwater. The results demonstrate that the pH operation range of the resin for better ammonium removal is 3 to 8. Lower ammonium removal at low and high pH occurred due to competition from H+ and loss of ammonium as ammonia gas, respectively. Equilibrium data of ammonium removal fitted both the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models with the maximum Langmuir ion exchange capacities for initial ammonium concentrations of 10–200 mg/L and 50–2000 mg/L, reaching 18.37 mg/g and 40.16 mg/g, respectively. The presence of co-ions in the water reduced the ammonium removal efficiencies slightly (< 12%) in the order Mg2+ > Ca2+ > K+. The higher affinity of ammonium to adsorbent is due to its lower hydrated ionic radius and H-bonding. The maximum exchange capacity in the fluidized bed studies of the original Purolite C100E (bed height 27 cm, resin weight 75 g, initial ammonium concentration 17.4 mg/L, filtration velocity 0.5 m/h) was 10.48 mg/g. It progressively reduced slightly after three regeneration cycles to 8.79 mg/g. The column breakthrough data satisfactorily fitted the Thomas model. A household filter cartridge packed with 4 kg Purolite C100E (80 cm height) and operated at a filtration velocity of 1.9 m/h in Vietnam successfully reduced the initial 6 mg NH4+/L in groundwater (after sand filter pre-treatment) to well below the Vietnam drinking water standard (3 mg/L-QCVN 01:2009/BYT) continuously for 1 week, suggesting that such a filter can be adopted in rural areas to successfully remove ammonium from groundwater.
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The datasets used and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Funding
This study was financially supported by the Aus4Innovation program — a development cooperation initiative funded by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and InnovationXchange. It is managed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, in partnership with the Ministry of Science and Technology of Vietnam.
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• Conceptualization: Tien Vinh Nguyen.
• Methodology: Paripurnanda Loganathan, Le Minh Tran, Tien Vinh Nguyen
• Formal analysis and investigation: Dai Quyet Truong
• Writing — original draft preparation: Dai Quyet Truong
• Writing — review and editing: Paripurnanda Loganathan, Le Minh Tran, Duc Loi Vu, Tien Vinh Nguyen, Saravanamuthu Vigneswaran, Gayathri Naidu
• Funding acquisition: Tien Vinh Nguyen, Saravanamuthu Vigneswaran
• Resources: Le Minh Tran, Duc Loi Vu, Tien Vinh Nguyen, Saravanamuthu Vigneswaran
• Supervision: Le Minh Tran, Tien Vinh Nguyen
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Truong, D.Q., Loganathan, P., Tran, L.M. et al. Removing ammonium from contaminated water using Purolite C100E: batch, column, and household filter studies. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 16959–16972 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16945-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16945-1