Performance of Nanofiltration for Dissolved Iron Removal from Ground Water

Backgrounds & Iron easily enters to ground water resources due to its abundance in the earth crust. Presence of iron, even at low concentrations, causes aesthetic and operational problems such as color, taste, and staining; making it necessary to remove from drinking water. Most of the conventional methods to remove iron produce high quantities of sludge. This research surveys utility of new techniques such as nanofiltration to remove iron from ground water. This descriptive study conducted to investigate utility of nanofiltration on removal of dissolved iron in laboratory scale. Iron concentration and operational pressure were 0.5-2.5 mg/L and 2-10 bar, respectively. FeCl2.4H2O was used to obtain different iron solutions and iron measurement done by phenantroline method. At iron concentration of 2.5 mg/L, increasing operational pressure from 2 to 10 bar increased removal efficiency from 91.84% to 92.95%. Increasing operational pressure increases flux and consequently the removal efficiency. Findings indicate that nanofiltration performance on iron removal from ground water is affected by operational pressure and flux. This method has high efficiency to remove iron from ground water.