Browsing by Author "Asingya, Derrick"

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    Performance of Banana Peelings Extract as A Natural Coagulant in the Treatment of Surface Water Case Study: River Rwizi, Mbarara.
    (Kabale University, 2023) Asingya, Derrick
    The existence of suspended solids and other pollutants in water leads to countless drawbacks during water treatment creating deleterious disinfection by-products such as trihalomethanes, Dichlorobromomethane and Trichloroacetic acid after the use of chemical coagulants, which are potentially deleterious to human health and the environment. However, many researchers have come up with different plant-based coagulants to replace Aluminum sulphate thus, the main objective of this research was to the investigate performance of banana peelings extract as a natural coagulant in the treatment of surface water by comparing the coagulation action of the raw and ripe banana peelings extracts against Aluminium sulphate, a chemical coagulant as the control experiment. According to the water quality tests carried out, the water quality of River Rwizi in Mbarara which was polluted with a recorded color of 41.5 PtCo and the recorded turbidity above maximum permissible limit of 5 NTU. The use of banana peelings extract helped in the removal of turbidity from the water by providing a protein content pectin and other mineral components like potassium which helped in neutralizing the negatively charged suspended solids in water by reducing the zeta potential of the river water thus making the particles to come together forming flocs to settle at the bottom. The initial turbidity of water that was at 41.5 NTU, pH at 7.17, color at 466 PtCo, Ecoli was 3.5CFU/100ml and TSS 45mg/l, after dosing in different banana peelings extracts from both the raw and ripe banana peelings, the values changed as follows; for the raw banana peelings extract at a 60mg/l concentration, the final turbidity value came to 5.6 NTU, color reduced to 25.6 PtCo, pH came to 7.9 and TSS reduced to 0.3mg/l. For the ripe banana peelings extract, the values changed as follows at 130mg/l concentration, the final turbidity value came to 11.8 NTU, color reduced to 88.9 PtCo, pH came to 13.5 and TSS reduced to 10.5mg/l as observed after different tests and experiments were carried out. According to the study research that was carried out, the optimum dosages for the coagulants were found out to be 50mg/l of alum, with a turbidity of 3.3 NTU, 60mg/l of raw banana peelings extract with a turbidity of 5.6 NTU and 130mg/l of the ripe banana peelings extract with a turbidity of 11.8 NTU and this reduced the turbidity by 92.04% 86.5% and 71.6% for 50mg/l alum, 60mg/l raw banana peelings extract and 130mg/l of ripe banana peelings extract respectively