Effect of Moringa oleifera as Water Coagulant on the Physico-chemical Properties of Gulbi-water

Abstract

Availability of clean water is a serious problem, especially in developing countries like Nigeria; Water for consumption purpose needs to be treated to meet the quality guidelines of 5 Nephelometric Turbidity Unit (NTU) according to World Health Organization, Wastewater treatment are mostly using Polyaluminum Chloride, a synthetic coagulant, which possess health risk and require expensive cost. This research was carried out to observe the effect of Moringa oleifera seed as natural coagulant to replace synthetic coagulant. Highly turbid water was collected from Gulbi River in Kaura-namoda, Zamfara State. Nigeria. M. oleifera seed was processed into flour and de-fated with different organic solvent. (AOY = Normal borehole water, BOY = Raw water sample from the river, COY = Water treated with (de-fated M. oleifera flour with Chloroform.), DOY = Water sample with (de-fated M. Oleifera flour with acetone), EOY = Water sample with (de-fated M. Oleifera flour with diethyl ether.), FOY = Water sample with Alum, GOY = Water sample with unde-fated M. oleifera flour) and used as a coagulant in place of aluminium sulphate (Alum). Collected water samples were treated with different Moringa oleifera flour coagulants samples The water treated with different coagulants samples were analyzed based on physic-chemical properties. The pH values ranged from 5.6 to 6.7. The turbidity, conductivity, total solid, temperature and coliform ranged from 4.19 to 76.5 NTU, 94.0 to 188.4 μS/cm, 45.5 to 89.3 mg/l, 30.4 to 33.8ºC and 9 × 402cfu, respectively. The work has been considered as revolutionary for small household applications in rural areas, where water purification is absent and M. oleifera trees are abundantly available.