Leili Mohammadi
1 
, Mojtaba Davoudi
2,3, Abbas Rahdar
4, Somayeh Rahdar
5,6* , Muhammad Nadeem Zafar
7, Mojdeh Jahantigh
1* , Javad Shahraki
81 Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine Research Center, Research Institute of Cellular and Molecular Sciences in Infectious Diseases, Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, Zahedan, Iran
2 Department of Environmental Health Engineering, School of Health, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran
3 Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran.
4 Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Zabol, Zabol, Iran
5 Student Research Committee, Department of Environmental Health Engineering, School of Health, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran
6 Department of Environmental Health, Zabol University of Medical Sciences, Zabol, Iran
7 Department of Chemistry, University of Gujrat, Gujrat, Pakistan
8 Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Department Health Education and Promotion, School of Public Health, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran
Abstract
Fluoride in high concentrations is hazardous and a threat to human life. This study used response surface methodology (RSM) to remove fluoride using ionic liquid-modified magnetic activated carbon (IL@mAC) nanocomposite and optimized the process parameters. The IL@mAC nanocomposite was synthesized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), and its adsorption efficiency for removal of fluoride was investigated under different operational such as pH (2-8), contact time (15-100 minutes), initial concentration (10-50 mg/L), and IL@mAC composite (0.01-0.1 g) at room temperature. The equilibrium experiment showed that the highest removal efficiency (~88%) was obtained at pH 5, the initial concentration of adsorbent of 0.1 mg/L, the initial concentration of fluoride of 50 mg/L, and the processing time of 15 minutes. The findings indicated high correlation coefficients for the proposed model (adjusted R2=0.9527 and R2=0.8048). Furthermore, the pseudo-second-order kinetic model was ideal (R2=0.998). The current study suggested that the adsorption process optimized by effective operational factors is highly efficient for fluoride removal.