Arsenic adsorption by iron-aluminium hydroxide coated onto macroporous supports: Insights from X-ray absorption spectroscopy and comparison with granular ferric hydroxides

This paper evaluates the arsenic adsorption characteristics of a macroporous polymer coated with coprecipitated iron-aluminium hydroxides (MHCMP). The MHCMP adsorbent-composite fits best with a pseudo-second order model for As(III) and a pseudo-first order kinetic model for As(V). The MHCMP shows a maximum adsorption capacity of 82.3 and 49.6 mg As/g adsorbent for As(III) and As(V) ions respectively, and adsorption followed the Langmuir model. Extended X-ray absorption fine structure showed that binding of As(III) ions were confirmed to take place on the iron hydroxides coated on the MHCMP, whereas for As(V) ions the binding specificity could not be attributed to one particular metal hydroxide. As(III) formed a bidentate mononuclear complex with Fe sites, whereas As(V) indicated on a bidentate binuclear complex with Al sites or monodentate with Fe sites on the adsorbent. The column experiments were run in a well water spiked with a low concentration of As(III) (100 μg/L) and a commercially available adsorbent (GEH®102) based on granular iron-hydroxide was used for comparison. It was found that the MHCMP was able to treat 7 times more volume of well water as compared to GEH®102, maintaining the threshold concentration of less than 10 μg As/L, indicating that the MHCMP is a superior adsorbent.