Mitigation of Fluoride from Brackish Water via Electrodialysis: An Environmentally Friendly Process

Present study reports the removal of fluoride from brackish water by electrodialysis (ED) process using indigenous ion exchange membranes. Defluoridation study was performed using in-house made laboratory scale ED unit of effective area 200 cm(2) using synthetic as well as real field sample. The effect of experimental conditions such as applied potential, brackishness in feed samples and fluoride concentration have been investigated during ED process. Experiments were performed with 2050 mg/L of salt concentration with 5, 10, 20 mg/L of fluoride in brackish water. Performance evolution study in terms of power consumption and current efficiency has also been studied to evaluate the suitability of the process for the defluoridation of brackish water. The experimental results revealed that the defluoridation performance increased as we increased potential. 2.0 volt/cell pair applied potential found to be optimum for defluoridation of brackish water in term of power consumption (1.2 kWh /kg) and current efficiency (87.0%) during electrodialysis. Study shows that ED system found to be suitable for defluoridation of brackish water.