Ultrasound-Assisted facile synthesis of Ce/Fe nanoparticles impregnated activated carbon for fluoride remediation

Fluoride contamination is a severe problem affecting the safety of drinking water around the world. The study focused on the facile synthesis of activated carbon (AC) impregnated with cerium and iron via ultrasonication and performance evaluation of these novel adsorbents using sono-sorption for defluoridation of drinking water. The use of ultrasound demonstrated maximum removal efficiency of 95.4% just after 20 min compared to shaker, where only 87% fluoride was removed after 60 min using AC having Ce/Fe molar ratios of 2:1 (AC/Ce/Fe-1). The key finding which makes our study outstanding is the rapid increase in adsorption rate upon application of ultrasonication while improving the adsorption capacity. The kinetics data obtained was best fitted with the pseudo-second-order model. The maximum adsorption capacity of AC/Ce/Fe-1 was obtained as 52.3 mg/g at room temperature and the synthesized material maintained its relatively high fluoride uptake up to the fourth cycle. The material shows the highest adsorption capacity as compared to the metal-modified AC available in the literature, making it ideal for fluoride removal from drinking water.

Automated summary

This study successfully synthesized activated carbon impregnated with cerium and iron using ultrasonication, and evaluated their performance for defluoridation of drinking water. The results showed that ultrasonication significantly improved the adsorption rate and capacity, making the material highly effective for fluoride removal from drinking water.