서강대학교

초록/요약

During the last decades, arsenic poisoning has been recognized as a worldwide problem. The threat of arsenic contamination to public health in developing countries is far more serious due to their high dependence on natural water sources. Many technologies for arsenic removal have been investigated and developed. However, because of the absence in rural areas of an infrastructure for large-scale water treatment, the filtering process, if it is to be successful, should be low-cost, small-scale, easily customized, and capable of being operated without electrical power. In this thesis, we introduce the first water filtration system for arsenic removal which was fabricated by three-dimensional (3D) printing technique. 3D printing itself can provide a compact and customized filtration system that meets the above-mentioned requirements and is made with abundant plastic materials. Moreover, due to the versatility of 3D printing, the internal surface area of the filters can be controlled to increase arsenic adsorption during filtering under atmospheric conditions. We investigated the effect of a controlled surface area on the flow rate and the deposition of the adsorbent, which are directly related to the adsorption of arsenite ions. To describe the arsenic adsorption on our 3D printed filtration system, we conducted batch, isotherm and column studies. We expect that this novel approach can be applicable to take advantage of architecture differences for various fields.