performance evaluation of the removal of fluoride from drinking water using mendon bauxite mine: case study on kuhbonan water, kerman, iran

background: as fluoride concentration in drinking water is one of the effective parameters in human health, finding the ways to remove excess amount of fluoride is very important in water supply projects. this study aimed to evaluate mendon bauxite mine in the removal of fluoride from drinking water. methods: this experimental study was conducted from may to october 2013 on synthetic and actual water samples obtained from drinking water of kuhbonan in kerman, iran. bauxite was obtained from the mendon bauxite mine in kohgiluyeh and boyer-ahmad province. characterization of bauxite was studied via x-ray diffraction (xrd) method; x-ray fluorescence (xrf) was used to clear the mechanism of adsorption. batch experiments were carried out to determine the effect of contact time, ph, adsorbent dose, and initial fluoride concentration parameters on the efficiency of defluoridation and to study the kinetics and adsorption isotherm. analysis of fluoride was carried out via spadns method. to analyse the data, excel software was used. findings: maximum removal efficiency was observed at the ph of 7, contact time of 120 minutes, and absorbent amount of 20 g/l for the synthetic solution, with removal efficiency of 76.96% and for the actual solution, with the efficiency of 56.64%. sorption data were best fitted with the langmuir sorption isotherm equation (r 2 = 0.719) and the second order synthetic model (r 2 = 0.989). conclusion: overall, the obtained results demonstrated that mendon bauxite could be effectively used for fluoride removal from synthetic samples as well as actual water samples.