Journal of Emerging Trends in Engineering and Applied Sciences: Research Areas

Abstract:
Seawater desalination is an efficient and reliable process for addressing current water demand. However, one of the major problems associated with this is the failure of reverse osmosis unit in meeting the boron requirement for irrigation application. Low boron concentration is generally required for proper plant growth and higher concentration always result in toxicity problem. Appropriate boron level in irrigation water therefore represents an important factor for high yield and quality agricultural production. Performance of commercially available boron-selective ion exchange resins, PuroliteR S110 was evaluated for boron removal from seawater reverse osmosis permeates. Effect of process parameters such as resin/boron solution ratio, initial boron concentration, resin selectivity, stirring speed, temperature and pH were investigated in batch studies. Boron removal increased with increasing resin dosage and with decreasing initial boron concentration. Temperature, presence of competing ions and stirring speed showed no significant effect on the process. The pH of solution was found to be the most important parameter with optimum boron removal at 9.3. Sorption kinetics followed Lagergren pseudo-second order kinetics. Shrinking core model was applied for the process kinetics and chemical reaction was found to be the rate limiting step. About 99% of boron removal under the optimum operating conditions was achieved with the resin and can be considered effective for irrigation water.

Keywords: desalination; boron; ion exchange; puroliter s110; sorption kinetics

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