Arsenic removal from natural waters by adsorption or ion exchange: an environmental sustainability assessment

Abstract

The Environmental Sustainability Assessment of the adsorption and ion-exchange processes for arsenic removal was the focus of this work. The pursued goals were to determine the impact of regenerating the activated alumina used as adsorbent and the comparison of the environmental performance of two ion-exchange resins. Additional goals were the comparison between the environmental performance of adsorption and ion-exchange processes and the evaluation of the effect of integrating the proposed techniques on a water purification facility. The Life Cycle Inventory was obtained by means of simplified models and simulation. In this work it was concluded that the removal of As(V) by adsorption consumed between 2 and 13 times more primary resources and created 3–17 times more environmental burdens than the ion-exchange process. The integration of adsorption or ion-exchange technology in the drinking water plant would raise the primary consumption of energy, materials, and water by 27–155%, 7–94%, and 0.48–5.3%, respectively. The increase in the environmental burdens was mainly because of the generation of hazardous spent materials.