Production of Clay Filters for Waste Water Treatment

Abstract

Water borne diseases have continued to linger and has remained a major challenge facing most developing nations today. This has been caused mainly by lack of access to clean water. The rapid industrialization has led to the discharge of effluents loaded with pollutants into our water bodies that have greatly affected humans, aquatic life and the environment. This work looks into the possibility of improving the quality water through the elimination of (i) inherent contaminants in water using filters made from cheap locally available red clay and biomass (300 microns sawdust) materials and (ii) chemical treatment of industrial and domestic effluents which in itself is a source of environmental pollution. The sawdust-clay materials were first thoroughly dry mixed in four different weight ratios, 6/80 (sample A), 5/80 (sample B) 4/80 (sample C) and 2/80 (sample D) before water was then added gradually and mixed until the clay clumped together completely, softened and workable. It was then wedged by pressing firmly in order to remove bubbles from the inside of the clay and molded into cup--like shape. It was first sun dried then oven dried at 110 °C and then fired in a Muffle furnace at 850 °C to burnout the sawdust biomass and thus create fine pores within the clay matrix. Performance of the sawdust-clay filters for the purification of waste water obtained from two different sources, industrial and kitchen effluents, was investigated. Results obtained from the study showed that the four filters (A, B, C and D) proved to be moderately effective for the treatment of the two effluents. All the filters reduced the total dissolved solids (TDS) to 120 and 110 mg/L of the industrial and kitchen waste water respectively, to acceptable levels which is less than 500mg/L, set by the World Health Organization (WHO). Conductivity values obtained after the treatment of the water samples were lower than the 1000 µs/cm limit set by WHO. And with the exception of filter D, others greatly reduced the turbidity of water samples as values less than 5 NTU as set by WHO were obtained. The pH values or acidity reduced for the industrial waste water from 4.5 to 7.02 and for kitchen waste water from 5.1 to 7.02 which met the specification set by WHO. Some of the heavy metals detected in the water samples were effectively reduced to acceptable levels. The filtration rates were 140, 100, 50 and 20 ml/min for filters B, A, C and D respectively. The rates rapidly reduced to about 2.7, 1.7, 1.0 and 0.7 ml/min for A, B, C and D respectively after 30 minutes of filtration. This implies that the filters were effective and should thus be developed for industrial and domestic waste water treatment applications.