Abstract

APPLICATION OF PLANT SEEDS AS A WATER PURIFIER

Chavan Awinash*, Lasgare Shraddha, Rathod Pankaj and Rathod Ashish

ABSTRACT

Water is one of the most important blessings of nature to mankind without which life would not have been possible on the planet. All living organisms on earth need water for life. The water must be accessed for safe drinking purpose but in rural areas, more than 700 million people live without access to safe and quality drinking water. In the past few decades evidence has been accumulating and influencing mortality due to the hardness of the drinking water. Various methods have been reported for converting hard water to soft water includes Ion-exchange resin method, Lime softening, Chelating agents, Reverse osmosis etc. Polyaluminum Chloride (PAC), a synthetic coagulant is mostly used for waste water and ground water treatment, which possess health risk and expensive. Simple, effective, natural, easily available and low-cost technical methods are being used to resolve this situation. Seeds of the plant like Clearing Nut Tree (Strychnos potatorum) and Drumstick Tree (Moringa oleifera) is an alternative natural way to overcome this problem, since their seeds contain a natural coagulant able to effectively reduce the turbidity of the raw water. The present work aimed to study the plant seeds of S. potatorum and M. oleifera acts as powerful coagulant as well as purifier and make water safe for drinking to rural people. These natural coagulants, when used for treatment of waters with low-to-medium turbidity range, are comparable to their chemical counterparts in terms of treatment efficiency. These natural coagulant plant seeds may function by means of adsorption mechanism followed by charge neutralization or polymeric bridging effect.

Keywords: Water, natural coagulants, turbidity, waste water treatment, Clearing Nut Tree, Drumstick Tree.