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| Figure 1. A boy holding a glass of water contaminated with arsenic and another one with potable water. |
Spain and India have long
surpassed healthy levels of arsenic in their drinking water. This is highly
alarming, since arsenic is known to be poisoning and can eventually lead to
organ failure. In this experiment, two techniques were tested in order to understand
and compare their effectiveness in their removal of arsenic. The first
technique was adsorption, which used activated alumina as an absorbent, while
the second d technique was an ion-exchange that used resins. Both techniques
were noted to have trade-off; as arsenic was removed from the water, a
hazardous pollutant containing the spent absorbent or resin was released (et
al. Dominguez-Ramos 2014). Thus, these techniques increased environmental damage,
as opposed to decreasing it. What is interesting though it the fact that
activated alumina did not create as much solid waste as resins. This study advanced
environmental sustainability by highlighting the importance of proper waste management
and promoted future research to test other techniques (et al, Dominguez-Ramos).
References
Dominguez-Ramos,
A., Chavan, K., García, V., Jimeno, G., Albo, J., Marathe, K. V., Yadav, G. D.,
and A. Irabien. 2014. Arsenic Removal from Natural Waters by Adsorption or Ion
Exchange: An Environmental Sustainability Assessment. Ind. Eng. Chem. Res.
Doi:1010.1021/ie4044345
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