Use of Acorn Leaves as a Natural Coagulant in a Drinking Water Treatment Plant

Abstract

In this study, the use of acorn leaves as a natural coagulant to reduce raw water turbidity and globally improve drinking water quality was investigated. The raw water was collected from a drinking water treatment plant located in Mila (Algeria) with an initial turbidity of 13.0 ± 0.1 NTU. To obtain acorn leaf powder as a coagulant, the acorn leaves were previously cleaned, washed with tap water, dried, ground and then finely sieved. To improve the coagulant activity and, consequently, the turbidity removal efficiency, the fine powder was also preliminarily treated with different solvents, as follows, in order to extract the coagulant agent: (i) distilled water; (ii) solutions of NaCl (0.25; 0.5 and 1 M); (iii) solutions of NaOH (0.025; 0.05 and 0.1 M); and (iv) solutions of HCl (0.025; 0.05 and 0.1 M). Standard Jar Test assays were conducted to evaluate the performance of the coagulant in the different considered operational conditions. Results of the study indicated that at low turbidity (e.g., 13.0 ± 0.1 NTU), the raw acorn leaf powder and those treated with distilled water (DW) were able to decrease the turbidity to 3.69 ± 0.06 and 1.97 ± 0.03 NTU, respectively. The use of sodium chloride solution (AC-NaCl) at 0.5 M resulted in a high turbidity removal efficiency (91.07%) compared to solutions with different concentrations (0.25 and 1 M). Concerning solutions of sodium hydroxide (AC-NaOH) and hydrogen chloride (AC-HCl), the lowest final turbidities of 1.83 ± 0.13 and 0.92 ± 0.02 NTU were obtained when the concentrations of the solutions were set at 0.05 and 0.1 M, respectively. Finally, in this study, other water quality parameters, such as total alkalinity hardness, pH, electrical conductivity and organic matters content, were measured to assess the coagulant performance on drinking water treatment.

Red Lentil (Lens culinaris) Extract as a Novel Natural Coagulant for Turbidity Reduction: An Evaluation, Characterization and Performance Optimization Study

“…The strong peak observed at 3400-3294 cm −1 was attribute to the OH functional group and the O-H stretching of the polymeric compound [16]. Besides, the peak at 2929-2928 cm −1 was recognized as C-H groups [17]. Both O-H and C-H functional groups could be attributed to the protein content found in the lentil extracts [18].…”

Optimization of active coagulant agent extraction method from Moringa Oleifera seeds for municipal wastewater treatment

“…In recent years, several studies were conducted on different plant materials that can be used as sources of natural coagulants (Abidin et al 2013;Bouchareb et al 2020). For instance, natural coagulants from acorn (Benalia et al 2018), starch (Esparza-Soto et al 2019), cactus (García-Morales et al 2018, okra (Balaji et al 2018), Gossypium herbaceum (Arulmathi et al 2019), and Moringa Oleifera (Arulmathi et al 2019;Bouchareb et al 2020) have been investigated. The plant that has received the greatest interest is Moringa Oleifera seeds (Abidin et al 2013;Bouchareb et al 2020).…”

Waste Bricks Applied as Removal Agent of Basic Blue 41 from Aqueous Solutions: Base Treatment and Their Regeneration Efficiency

“…However, its major drawback is its relatively high cost. This has encouraged many researchers to search for cheaper substitutes, such as coal, fly ash, silica gel, wool wastes, agricultural wastes, oak leaves, wood wastes, sewage sludge, and clay materials [9][10][11][12]. Clays, such as sepiolite, bentonite, montmorillonite, and smectite are being considered as alternative low-cost adsorbents with high chemical and mechanical stability, small particle sizes, lamellar structures, and negatively charged surfaces.…”