Integral approach of adsorption and chemical treatment of fluoride containing wastewater: Batch and optimization using RSM

•Integral approach of adsorption and chemical treatment has been studied.•Soil used as adsorbent and KIO3 used as chemical reagent in this study.•Central composite design (CCD) was also applied to optimize the process parameters.•96.46% of removal was observed using both adsorbent and chemical treatment simultaneously.

The present study focuses on the effect of adsorption and chemical treatment for the treatment of fluoride containing wastewater. Soil was collected from bed sediments of river Churni, West Bengal and was used as an adsorbent. Potassium iodate (KIO3) was used as an chemical agent to treat the fluoride containing solution. Optimization of the process parameter using Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was carried out in both cases to evaluate the effect of process parameters on the removal of fluoride. The two level three factor (23) central composite design (CCD) was also applied to optimize the process parameters. Both the process showed de-fluoridation efficiency such as 91.42% for KIO3 and 86.71% for soil. To evaluate the combined effect of adsorption and chemical treatment, both the adsorbent and KIO3 were mixed and used. It was observed that the fluoride removal using both adsorbent and chemical treatment was 96.46%. Thus, it could be concluded that this integral approach for treatment of fluoride containing solution has potential for the treatment of fluoride containing wastewater.