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Although water supplies containing excessive amount of fluoride are generally very rare worldwide, there are locations in Turkey where drinking water contains very high fluoride concentrations. Especially in the middle and eastern part of Turkey, some mineral and drinking waters contain very high fluoride concentrations. It is a well known fact that drinking water exceeding the critical fluoride concentration (1 mg F−/L) may cause serious dental and skeletal damages. In this study, various techniques were evaluated to find the most suitable solution for defluoridation for these regions, which have high concentrations of fluoride in their water supplies. For this purpose, various chemical agents including locally produced alumina were investigated. Locally produced alumina gave promising and economically sound results in terms of defluoridation capacity and availability.

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Denitrification of drinking water was studied using various natural organic solid substrates (NOSS) such as poplar, hornbeam, pine shavings and wheat straw as a carbon source in a batch unit. The highest nitrate removal efficiency was observed with the wheat straw, so it was chosen as the carbon source for biodenitrification in an upflow laboratory reactor. In order to remove solid particles from the effluent water, a sand filter unit was placed after the denitrification reactor. The soluble DOC contents in the reactor affected the efficiency of nitrate elimination and nitrate concentration of the effluent water remained below acceptable values (50 mg/l NO3-). In order to remove colour, DOC and nitrate from the water, powdered activated carbon adsorption studies were performed in the batch unit.