Abstract
It is challenging to develop a low-cost household water treatment (HWT) that simultaneously deliver an effective and robust way for safe and reliable water supply. Here, we report a simple flow-through filter made by zeolite-cotton packing in a tube (ZCT) as low-cost HWT device to remove heavy metal ions from contaminated water. The zeolite-cotton is fabricated by an on-site template-free growth route that tightly binds mesoporous single-crystal chabazite zeolite onto the surface of cotton fibers. As a result, the ZCT set-up with optimized diameter achieves both high adsorption efficiency, proper flow rate, reliable supply and strong stability at the same time. After flowed through the set up packed with 10 g of zeolite-cotton, 65 mL 1000 ppm Cu2+ solution was purified down to its safety limit (<1 ppm). Notably, their efficiency remains unaltered when filtering several ions simultaneously. In a simulated purification process, 8 L of water contaminated by Cu2+, Cd2+ and Pb2+ could be transformed into drinking water and it enables the removal of heavy metals to concentrations of below 5 ppb (μg L−1). We also show that the ZCT can be used for disinfection by introducing Ag-exchanged zeolite-cotton without contaminating the water with Ag ions (<0.05 ppm).
Highlights
Drinking water safety is one of the most serious health problems throughout the world, especially for those people in relatively undeveloped districts
The peaks appearing at 12.56°, 17.64°, 20.44°, 28.12° and 35.56° can be readily indexed as chabazite (JCPDS: 34–0137) while the peaks located at 6.27°, 10.14°, 18.62°, 26.86°, 31.05° and 33.64° matches with the standard faujasite pattern (JCPDS: 12–0228)
These two kinds of zeolite are observed by Scanning Election Microscope (SEM)
Summary
Drinking water safety is one of the most serious health problems throughout the world, especially for those people in relatively undeveloped districts. ZC hybrid material exhibits superior ion-exchange activity and outperforms the conventionally zeolite granules or zeolite powder impregnated cotton cloth in terms of high heavy ion removal capacity and short flow-through time, easy operation and low cost. It achieved an ionic adsorption capacity for over 6.5 mg g−1 (Cu2+) and a treatment efficiency of 84 mL day−1 g−1, enabling the removal of heavy metals to the concentrations below 5 ppb (μg L−1). We envision that ZCT could be an economically viable process for a daily drinking water purification for undeveloped regions
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