Studies on ecofriendly approach for removal of water hardness by Moringa oleifera Lam. seed extract

Water softeners helps in removing hardness of water and make them fit for our daily decisive usages. For our work, different water sources like surface water (Hebbal Lake), Bore well water (NPS School, Ozone Urbana, Bangalore) and Corporation water (BWSSB) were selected and their respective hardness as CaCO3 were analysed before and after treatment with Moringa oleifera seed extract. The seeds of Moringa oleifera, one of the best natural coagulants as per the previous studies were used in this protocol. In normal water treatment scheme most preferably ion exchange techniques were used for the removal of hardness, which would likely to be a resin based technology. Also the ion exchange procedure was completely dependent on industrial resins, which were manufactured by major corporate concerns (like Lancer, Toyota, Ion Exchange India Ltd, Thermax Ltd, LG etc.), hence incur huge cost. Industrial resins have Na+ ions attached to the resin beads replaces Ca2+ and Mg2+ ions present in water during the ion exchange process. The resin beads can be regenerated or recharged again with Na+ ion by NaCl solution once the resin gets exhausted. Our work persuaded in another way of removing hardness from water by the principle means of adsorption and conversion of soluble hardness-causing ions to insoluble products by precipitation reactions. Moringa oleifera seed extracts were prepared and performed jar test to obtain the best required dosage for hardness removal in the selected water samples. The obtained dosage (mg/l) or ppm of Moringa oleifera was dosed to the selected water samples through the dosing system present in an existing water treatment system of capacity 2 m3/hr. The removal efficiency was observed to be between 50 to 60% after passing through the treatment system with Moringa oleifera dosage. Hence this work can pave way to find a best alternate method for hardness removal water.