Treatment of Borehole Water Using Moringa oleifera Seed and Activated Carbon

Abstract:

The quality and accessibility of drinking water are of paramount importance to human health. Drinking water may contain disease causing agents and toxic chemicals, and to control the risks to public health, systematic water quality monitoring and surveillance are required. Thousands of chemicals have been identified in drinking water supplies around the world and are considered potentially hazardous to human health at relatively high concentrations. Heavy metals are the most harmful of the chemical pollutants and are of concern due to their toxicities to humans. Moringa oleifera seed acts as a natural coagulant, adsorbent and antimicrobial agent while commercial activated carbon is known for its excellent heavy metal removal. It is believed that Moringa oleifera seed is an organic natural polymer. This work has been carried out to analyse the removal of some heavy metals (lead, nickel, iron, and zinc) from borehole water using moringa seed powder, activated carbon and a combination of the two adsorbents. The results obtained showed that Moringa oleifera is environmentally friendly and suitable for water treatment containing undesirable heavy metals. It was also discovered that all the adsorbents were able to completely remove the lead metal in the water. Furthermore, within the adsorbent dosage limit investigated, only activated carbon could remove all the zinc present in the water. However, there was an indication that higher dosage of the coagulants would be able to remove higher percentage of the other metals. It was also found that, in some cases, an increase in the dosage of some adsorbents led to decrease in the percentage removal of some metals. This was observed to be an indication that there could be the need to take note of the optimum dosages of the adsorbents that need to be used in treating any water. The good performances displayed by these local adsorbents have shown that they could effectively replace the chemicals that have been found to have links with some health problems in human.

• Periodical: International Journal of Engineering Research in Africa (Volume 32)
• Pages: 62-75
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/JERA.32.62
• Online since: September 2017
• Authors: Ebenezer Ajibola Olugbade*, Folorunso Fisola Ojesola, Abdulwahab Giwa
• Keywords: Activated Carbon, Borehole Water Treatment, Heavy Metals, Moringa oleifera

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