Quality of Life (Banja Luka) 5(1-2): 46-52

EQUILIBRIUM STUDY FOR ADSORPTION OF ARSENITES AND ARSENATES FROM AQUEOUS SOLUTIONS BY APPLICATION OF MODIFIED NATURAL INORGANIC MATERIALS

ZORAN BOZHINOVSKI¹, KIRIL LISICHKOV², MIRKO MARINKOVSKI², STEFAN KUVENDZIEV²,
DEJAN DIMITROVSKI², KOSTADIN NIKOLOVSKI^2
1“Water Supply and Sewage”, Public Enterprise, Skopje, Center for Sanitary Control
²Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy, University “Ss. Cyril and Methodius”, Skopje

Abstract: Two raw materials were investigated to provide a cheap and efficient arsenic removal from drinking water supply. For this purpose, studied materials were modified by insertion of iron within the materials’ structure and substitution of calcium and magnesium ions with sodium ions in order to improve the sorptive and ion-exchange properties. White tuff from Strmos region and the commercially available Zeofit were the materials considered within our study. Simulations were performed on prepared solutions of arsenic added to water samples from the water supply in Skopje. Obtained results suggest that the Zeofit material produced better results regarding arsenic adsorption at various initial arsenic concentrations. The white tuff from Strmos is effective only at lower initial concentrations of arsenic. Regarding the equilibrium study on investigated systems for both materials, implemented models produced a good fit when applied to As5+ systems. The Strmos material did not produce satisfactory fitting results to implemented equilibrium models for the As3+ systems.

Keywords: arsenic removal, adsorption, adsorbent modification, modeling, equilibrium study