Occurrence of Arsenic in Groundwater in the Suburbs of Beijing and its Removal Using an Iron-Cerium Bimetal Oxide Adsorbent

Abstract

The occurrence of arsenic (As) in groundwater in fourteen villages in Houshayu Town, Shunyi District, Beijing, China, was investigated, and a column experiment for the removal of As was conducted on-site with a pellet type iron-cerium (Fe-Ce) bimetal oxide adsorbent prepared in lab. The As concentration in the groundwater of twelve villages exceeds the maximum contamination level (10 µg/L) of the World Health Organization, and two of them exceed that of China (50 µg/L). A column experiment at a space velocity of 3 h-1 shows that the Fe-Ce adsorbent could remove As(V) (total As, 71 ± 19.7 µg/L) from groundwater with high efficiency. Around 11,500 bed volumes were gained when As(V) in the effluent exceeds 10 µg/L, giving an accumulated adsorption capacity of 6.0 mg As(V)/g adsorbent. Both batch tests and the column test suggest that humic substances might compete with As(V) for the adsorption sites, which disappeared after the column was continuously operated for more than two weeks. The effluent quality including heavy metals, radioactivity, etc., was confirmed to meet the drinking water standards of WHO and China.

Arsenate adsorption on an Fe–Ce bimetal oxide adsorbent: EXAFS study and surface complexation modeling

“…However, there is little information available regarding bimetal oxide adsorbents such as Fe-Mn, Fe-Zr, and Ce-Ti oxides, which have been reported for As adsorption [28][29][30]. Recently, an iron-cerium bimetal oxide (Fe-Ce) adsorbent was successfully developed for As(V) removal [31][32][33], which showed a significantly higher As(V) adsorption capacity than the referenced cerium and ferric oxides (CeO 2 and Fe 3 O 4 ) prepared by same procedure and some other adsorbents reported recently [31]. Also, it has good performance characteristic of both cerium oxide (e.g.…”

“…resistance to acids and bases, low solubility and cheap). Additionally, batch and long-term column studies of arsenate adsorption performance using groundwater samples from Inner Mongolia and the suburbs of Beijing, respectively, have shown that the Fe-Ce adsorbent was promising [32]. Moreover, XPS results showed the existence of abundant metal hydroxyl groups on the surface of Fe-Ce, among which Fe-OH mainly reacted with As.…”

Removal of arsenate from water by using an Fe–Ce oxide adsorbent: Effects of coexistent fluoride and phosphate

“…Recently, an iron-cerium (Fe-Ce) bimetal oxide adsorbent has been successfully developed for arsenate removal, which has a higher adsorption capacity (2.00 mmol g −1 ) than many reported adsorbents [6]. Batch and long-term column studies on arsenate adsorption performance using groundwater samples from Inner Mongolia and the suburbs of Beijing, respectively, have shown that the adsorbent is a promising one, although its performance might be affected by some coexisting substances [7,8]. However, how F or P competes with arsenate for sites on the adsorbent surface has hitherto been unclear.…”

Geochemical and multiple stable isotope (N, O, S) investigation on tap and bottled water from Beijing, China

“…However, aqueous environments characterized by reducing conditions represent a potential health risk, due to the possible release of contaminants, such as As, as shown by previous studies (Dou et al, 2006;Hosono et al, 2011a;Saunders et al, 2008). In contrast to most tap water samples, the majority of bottled mineral water from Beijing supermarkets shows much lower concentrations of dissolved nitrate in a narrow range between 0.7 and 5.8 mg/L (Table 4).…”

“…3d). In these areas groundwater is mainly derived from shallow depths of not more than 100-120 m (Dou et al, 2006) compared to the deeper origin of the groundwater (N 100 m) for the tap water production in urban Beijing. In contrast to the deeper aquifers of the Beijing Plain, which consist mainly of coarse-grained sand-pebble-gravel associations (Zhou et al, 2012), the shallow alluvial sediments consistent of fine-grained sediments and clays with sulfide minerals and organic matter are suggested to contain substantial amounts of As (Plant et al, 2003).…”