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The quest to reduce fluoride in groundwater to WHO acceptable limit of 1.5 mg/L to prevent diseases such as teeth mottling and skeletal fluorosis was the motivation for this study. Al/Fe oxide-modified diatomaceous earth was prepared and its defluoridation potential evaluated by batch method. The sorbent with pHpzc 6.0 ± 0.2 is very reactive. The maximum 82.3% fluoride removal attained in 50 min using a dosage of 0.3 g/100 mL in 10 mg/L fluoride was almost attained within 5 min contact time; 81.3% being the percent fluoride removal at 5 min contact time. The sorbent has a usage advantage of not requiring solution pH adjustment before it can exhibit its fluoride removal potential. A substantial amount of fluoride (93.1%) was removed from solution when a sorbent dosage of 0.6 g/100 mL was contacted with 10 mg/L fluoride solution for 50 min at a mixing rate of 200 rpm. The optimum adsorption capacity of the adsorbent was 7.633 mg/g using a solution containing initially 100 mg/L fluoride. The equilibrium pH of the suspensions ranged between 6.77 and 8.26 for 10 and 100 mg/L fluoride solutions respectively. Contacting the sorbent at a dosage of 0.6 g/100 mL with field water containing 5.53 mg/L at 200 rpm for 50 min reduced the fluoride content to 0.928 mg/L-a value below the upper limit of WHO guideline of 1.5 mg/L fluoride in drinking water. The sorption data fitted to both Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms but better with the former. The sorption data obeyed only the pseudo-second-order kinetic, which implies that fluoride was chemisorbed.

An evaluation of the effects of calcination temperature and solution pH on the fluoride removal capacity of Al/Fe oxide-modified diatomaceous earth was carried out. The sorbent was observed to be most effective and stable within the pH range 6.70–8.12, where the lowest concentrations of Al and Fe (<1 mg/L) in treated water were recorded. Thus, sorbent loss was minimal at that pH range. It was observed that the sorbent lost its efficiency and stability at calcination temperatures above 600 °C. Inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometer analysis of metals in supernatants and thermogravimetric analysis of the sorbent showed that there was substantive loss of Al and Fe from the sorbent at temperatures above 600 °C because of evaporation. K2SO4 solution proved to be the best regenerant for spent sorbent compared to NaOH and Na2CO3, which caused sorbent loss owing to high solution pH. The CO32– from Na2CO3 bound to regenerated sorbent so much that it could not be displaced by fluoride during subsequent defluoridation experiments. Sorbent regenerated with 0.1 M K2SO4 solution could reduce 10 mg/L fluoride in artificial water at a dosage of 0.8 g/100 mL by 81.8% and 67.2% at the second and third cycles, respectively.