Effect of montmorillonite Clay in partial treatment of Sea water

Abstract

With increase in population day by day all over the world, it is not easy to allocate water for everyone of them through ground water. Now providing water of good quality had been under threat, which made us to turn our view to look on alternative to groundwater like treating sea water. There are many methods to treat seawater mostly which are expensive by cost and complex in operation and maintenance. This research proposes a mechanism of using montmorillionite clay, a naturally easy available material for treating the seawater partially to meet up the as per IS standards by reducing the seawater chemical characteristics. Clay minerals have been appreciated for their nature of adsorption and cation exchange. Experiment was conducted with standard one litre of seawater by varying the montmorillionite clay and the detention time through precipitation aided by sorption and cation exchange. The major parameter analyzed were pH, Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), Chloride (Cl) and Sodium (Na). It was found that the optimum clay of 60 g at a detention time 40 min gives us a better result of removing 89.83 % TDS, 96.62 % of Chloride and 98 % of Sodium. The final distillate was found to be worth of using for industries, irrigation and domestic purpose other than drinking.