Boron removal from water with fractionized Amberlite IRA743 resin

• Boron removal from water with fractionized Amberlite IRA743 resin was studied.
• Effect of the resin particle size, contact time, pH, temperature, and side ions on boron removal was investigated.
• It was found that the pseudo-second order sorption model describes well the kinetic data on boron removal.
• It was shown that the fine resin particles saturated with boron can be efficiently regenerated and reused.

In this paper, the process of boron removal from water with fractions of Amberlite IRA743 resin of different particle sizes of 1–45, 150–180 and 500–700 μm was studied over a boron concentration range of 1.5–15.0 mg/L. The effect of the resin dosage, particle size, contact time between the resin and feed, solution pH and temperature, presence of side NaCl, Na2SO4 and MgCl2 salts on boron removal was studied. It was shown that the efficiency of boron removal increased with increasing pH, temperature, contact time and resin dosage while it decreased with increasing feed boron concentration and resin particle size. The side ions even at their high content in water did not affect the efficiency of boron removal. It was found that the pseudo-second order model describes well the kinetic data on boron removal from water with fine particles of Amberlite IRA743 resin indicating that boron sorption with the resin is limited by a rate of the solute complexation with N-methyl-d-glucamine functional groups. It was shown that the resin particles saturated with boron can be efficiently regenerated and reused after treatment with HCl or H2SO4 solutions followed by NaOH reconditioning.