Preparation of mesoporous alumina electro-generated by electrocoagulation in NaCl electrolyte and application in fluoride removal with consistent regenerations

The fluoride adsorption by Electro-Generated Adsorbents (EGA) was briefly and recently shown. In this paper, the preparation of a particular EGA and its characteristics are presented. For the first time, the fluoride adsorption of one EGA was deeply investigated showing that the regeneration of this material leads to an efficient process which was better than an electrocoagulation one. The investigated adsorbent called EGA_NaCl was prepared by electrolysis in NaCl electrolyte with aluminum electrodes and was characterized by X-ray Diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), FTIR and BET studies. The physical analyses showed that EGA_NaCl was a mesoporous mixture of AlOOH and three Al(OH)₃ which contain the chlorine element and registered the surface area of 114.31 m² g⁻¹. The presence of chlorine explains the pH increase observed during the electrolysis. The fluoride adsorption as a function of pH, initial fluoride concentration, EGA_NaCl dose, temperature, co-ions and cycles of regeneration was studied using batch methods. Among the kinetic models, the pseudo – second – order model was superior to others and among the adsorption isotherms, Langmuir model fits well as compared to that of Freundlich model based on the regression coefficient values. Determination of thermodynamic parameters such as ΔH and ΔG respectively revealed the nature of endothermic and temperature – driven nature of the fluoride sorption process. The maximum adsorption capacity of EGA_NaCl was found to be 16.33 mg g⁻¹ at 27 °C and a maximum fluoride removal occurred at pH 6.55. The spent adsorbent showed the defluoridation efficiency of 95.53% up to fifth regeneration with diluted NaOH. Factorial design matrix and analysis of variance using JMP model have also been extensively discussed in this paper.