Turning Plastic Bottles into Water Purifiers: A New Way to Fight Fluoride Pollution

Turning waste plastic bottles into a powerful tool to clean up polluted water! That's what scientists did in a fascinating study. They took recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles and transformed them into something called expanded graphite (EG). This new material was tested using various tools like FTIR, XRF, and XRD to understand its structure. The results showed that EG could remove fluoride from contaminated water very effectively. Scientists found that EG had a large surface area of 247. 1 square meters per gram, which is like having a huge magnet to attract and capture fluoride particles. They also noticed changes in the material's crystalline order and identified key functional groups like hydroxyl and alkene. Tests revealed that EG's ability to remove fluoride depended on factors such as pH levels, contact time, and the initial fluoride concentration. Using a special method called response surface methodology (RSM), they figured out the best conditions for maximum fluoride removal, which was 97%! They also used different models to understand how the adsorption process worked. The findings showed that the process followed a pattern known as the pseudo-first-order model. Overall, the study demonstrated that waste-derived EG can be an efficient tool for treating water polluted with fluoride.