Abstract
Inorganic contamination in drinking water, especially fluoride and uranium, has been recognized as a worldwide problem imposing a serious threat to human health. Among several treatment technologies applied for fluoride and uranium removal, nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) have been studied extensively and proven to offer satisfactory results with high selectivity. In this review, a comprehensive summary and critical analysis of previous NF and RO applications on fluoride and uranium removal is presented. Fluoride retention is generally governed by size exclusion and charge interaction, while uranium retention is strongly affected by the speciation of uranium and size exclusion usually plays a predominant role for all species. Adsorption on the membrane occurs as some uranium species interact with membrane functional groups. The influence of operating conditions (pressure, crossflow velocity), water quality (concentration, solution pH), solute-solute interactions, membrane characteristics and membrane fouling on fluoride and uranium retention is critically reviewed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 679-691 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Chemosphere |
| Volume | 117 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 1 Nov 2014 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2014 |
Funding
The authors thank Leverhulme Royal Society Africa Award SADWAT-Tanzania for project funding. The PhD studentship for Junjie Shen was provided by Energy Technology Partnership (ETP) Scholarship with Drinking Water Quality Regulator for Scotland (DWQR) as industrial sponsor. Godfrey Mkongo (Ngurdoto Defluoridation Research Station (NDRS), Arusha, Tanzania) is acknowledged for his local support. Prof Bryce Richards (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany) and Dr Laura Richards (University of Manchester, UK) contributed with valuable scientific comments. Appendix A
Keywords
- Drinking water
- Fluoride
- Nanofiltration
- Reverse osmosis
- Uranium
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Environmental Engineering
- Environmental Chemistry
- General Chemistry
- Pollution
- Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis
