This document provides an overview of arsenic contamination in groundwater and treatment methods. It begins with an introduction to arsenic, sources of arsenic contamination in groundwater, and health effects of exposure. It then reviews various treatment methods including precipitation processes, sorption technology, membrane filtration, and emerging biological technologies. Tables compare the efficiency of different conventional and emerging treatment techniques. The results and discussion section analyzes the effectiveness of different methods. The conclusion emphasizes that arsenic should be treated before drinking and available technologies generally remove arsenic effectively but are sometimes complex, expensive or inadequate for arsenic III.

1. Management of Arsenic Contamination in
Groundwater
Presented by
Chandra Vanshi Thakur
17WM60R07
School of Water Resources
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
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2. Contents
• Introduction
• Objective
• Review of Literature
• Treatment Methods
• Result And Discussions
• Conclusion
• References
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3. Introduction
• Arsenic is a p-block metalloid
• Arsenic exists in nature as arsenopyrite, cobaltite, realgar etc
• Has oxidation state of -3, 0, 3, and 5
• Inorganic Arsenic is more toxic to human
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4. Introduction: Source
• Anthropogenic activities in the crust
• Various chemical processes (redox reaction, dissolution,
chemisorption, hydrolysis )
• Volcanic ash
• Weathering of the arsenic-containing mineral
Arsenic contents of surface sediments vary in the range 6-40
mg/kg; fine sand and sediments tend to have higher levels of
arsenic than coarser fractions (Safiullah, 2007)
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5. Contd..
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Figure 1: Arsenic sources.
Figure source https://www.groundwater.org

6. Review of Literature
Citation with year Work done Critical comments
Brandhuber et al., 1998 Removal of Arsenic
through filtration , electric
repulsion and adsorption of
arsenic bearing compounds
. Effectiveness depends on
the size distribution of
arsenic bearing particles.
Efficiency of membrane
filtration for arsenic
removal is sensitive to
untreated water
contaminants.
Dambies, 2005 Removal of Arsenic by
passing water through
Metal loaded polymers in
controlled pH
Buffer should be avoided as
they can interfere with
adsorbent.
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7. 7
Citation with year Work done Critical comments
LUZI et al., 2004 Removal of Arsenic
through several adsorptive
media like activated
alumina, activate carbon,
iron and manganese coated
sand with or without pH
adjustment.
The efficiency of adsorptive
media depends on the use of
oxidising agents .this method
is tend to be used more often
when arsenic is the only
contaminant.
Mukhopadhyay et al.,
2002
Biological mechanism used
to reduce Arsenate to
Arsenite and oxidise As(iii)
enzymatically.
A wide range of bacteria
should be isolated from
various contaminated water.
Review of Literature

8. OBJECTIVES
• To discuss the health effect of Arsenic exposure
• To study the various methodology involves in reducing As
concentration
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9. Health effect of Arsenic Exposure
• Trivalent arsenic is more water soluble than pentavalent
arsenic compounds so it is more toxic in nature
• Arsenic exposure causes melanosis, kurtosis and pigmentation
(Rahman et al., 2009)
• It affects pituitary gland and also causes Alzheimer disease
(O’Bryant Et al., 2011).
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10. Contd..
• Causes headache, encephalopathy and disrupted cranial
activities and even death on acute exposure (Uede and
Furukawa, 2003; Bartolome et al., 1999)
• iAs exposure can causes endemic black foot diseases (BFD) it
is a specific type of peripheral vascular diseases (Tseng et al.,
2005)
• Densely populated regions of South Asia affected by arsenic
contamination (Bhattacharya et al., 1997; Smith et al., 2000)
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11. Methodology
• Precipitation processes
• Sorption Technology
• Membrane Filtration
• Emerging Biological Technologies
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12. Precipitation Process
 Involves coagulation with iron and aluminium salts
 Adsorption co-precipitation with hydrolyzing metals like Al3+
and Fe3+
 Atmospheric oxygen, hypochlorite and permanganate are used
for oxidation
 Also capable of removing hardness or heavy metal
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13. Sorption Technology
 Materials having big surface are and high surface energy can
separate and remove the contaminant by the process of
Adsorption
 Granular adsorptive filter media have high effectiveness in
arsenic removal from water
 These technology are capable of removing arsenic to below the
required standard level(USEPA, 2002)
 Efficiency of adsorptive media depends on use of oxidising
agents to provoke the adsorption of Arsenic
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14. Membrane Filtration
 Arsenic can be remove through filtration, electric repulsion
and adsorption of arsenic bearing compounds
 Effectiveness of microfiltration and ultrafiltration depends on
the size bearing particles in the source water
 Since arsenic level in groundwater is typically 80-90% RO is
very effectivecin removing both As(iii) and As(v)
 Produces large volume of residuals and is more expensive
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15. Emerging Biological Technologies
 Two major biological mechanisms can describe the reduction
of arsenate into arsenite
a) Detoxification of the cells
b) Dissimilatory reduction
 It include heterotrophic bacteria as well as chemoautotrophic
bacteria in which As(III) serve as an electron donor reducing
oxygen or nitrate
 energy produced is used to fix CO2, which provide bacteria
with the carbon required for growth
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16. Table 1: Efficiency of conventional arsenic removal techniques
Source : Duarte, 2009
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17. Table 2. Comparison of the main emerging techniques for arsenic removal
Source : Duarte., 2009
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18. Results and Discussion
 Coagulation-filtration and softening with lime addition
techniques are economical, but display lower efficiencies
(<90%)
 Among the most efficient techniques (>95%), adsorption using
aluminium carbonates stands out as one of the least expensive
 Compared with AA, hybrid adsorbents enhance adsorption
capacities for arsenite due to the introduction of thiol groups
 Based on filtration process use of iron oxide as an adsorbent
has high removal efficiencies (over 95%)
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19. Conclusion
• Since acute and chronic exposure to arsenic can cause a
variety of diseases, including fatal cancer , it should be treated
before drinking with suitable treatment process
• Available arsenic removal technologies are generally complex,
expensive and often inadequate for As(III)
• With excellent microbiological quality removal of Arsenic can
be done effectively
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20. References
• Brandhuber, P. and Amy, G., 1998. Alternative methods for membrane filtration of
arsenic from drinking water. Desalination, 117(1-3), pp.1-10.
• Birgit Daus, Rainer Wennrich, Holger Weiss, 2004, Sorption materials for arsenic
removal from water:a comparative study. Water Research 38, 2948–2954.
• Duarte, A.A., Cardoso, S.J. and Alçada, A.J., 2009. Emerging and innovative
techniques for arsenic removal applied to a small water supply
system. Sustainability, 1(4), pp.1288-1304.
• Darrell Kirk Nordstrom, 2002, Worldwide Occurrences of Arsenic in Ground Water,
Science Vol. 296, 2143-2145.
• D. Mohan, C.U. Pittman Jr., 2007, Arsenic removal from water/wastewater using
adsorbents—A critical review Journal of Hazardous Materials 142, 1–53.
• Dr. Laurent Dambies, 2005, Existing and Prospective Sorption Technologies for the
Removal of Arsenic in Water, Separation Science and Technology-Vol. 39, No. 3, pp.
603–627.
• EPA, 2001, “Arsenic in Drinking Water -Treatment Technologies”: Removal, 1-5.
• Erin Valentine, Michael George, and Lisa McIntosh, 2003,”Arsenic in drinking
water”.
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21. References
• Ioannis A Katsoyiannis, Anastasios Zouboulis, 2004, Application of Biological Processes for
the Removal of Arsenic from Groundwater “Article in Water Research 38, 17–26.
• Khaja Shameem Mohammed Abdul , Sudheera Sammanthi Jayasinghe , Ediriweera P.S.
Chandana a, Channa Jayasumana c, P. Mangala C.S.De Silva ,2015 , Arsenic and human
health effects: A review. Environmental Toxicology and Pharmacology.
• Liu Zhenzhong, Deng Huiping& Zhan Jian, 2007, Arsenic in Drinking Water and Its
Removal, Chinese Journal of Population Resources andEnvironment-5, 23-28.
• McCarty, K.M., Hanh, H.T., Kim, K.-W., 2011. Arsenic geochemistry and human health in
South East Asia. Rev. Environ. Health 26, 71–78.
• Mukhopadhyay, R.; Rosen, B.P. Arsenate reductases in prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Environ.
Health Perspect. 2002, 110, 745-748
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22. References
• R. Nickson , C. Sengupta , P. Mitra , S. N. Dave , A. K. Banerjee , A.Bhattacharya , S. Basu ,
N.Kakoti , N.S.Moorthy , M. Wasuja , M. Kumar , D.S. Mishra , A. Ghosh , D. P. Vaish ,
A.K.Srivastava , R. M. Tripathi , S.N.Singh ,R.Prasad , S. Bhattacharya & P. Deverill, 2007,
Journal of Environmental Science and Health Part A 42, 1707–1718.
• SSWM, 2004, Arsenic Removal Technologies, Compiled by:Household sand filter operated
by a family in the red river delta.Source: LUZI et al.
• Sustainability, 2009, Emerging and Innovative Techniques for Arsenic Removal Applied to a
Small Water Supply System, 1288-1304.
• Thematic Overview Paper 17 by Branislav Petrusevski, Saroj Sharma, Jan C. Schippers
(UNESCO-IHE), and Kathleen Shordt (IRC), Reviewed by: Christine van Wijk (IRC).
“Arsenic in drinking water”. IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, March 2007.
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23. THANK YOU…
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