An Assessment of the Use of Static Magnetic Field for Sodium Fluoride Defluoridation and Removal of Escherichia Coli and Rotavirus Pathogens from Water

¹ Department of Physics, University of Nairobi, P.O Box 30197-00100 Nairobi, Kenya
² Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada

^* Corresponding Author: marytaabu@students.uonbi.ac.ke

Abstract

The use of chemicals such as chlorine in water purification leaves harmful biproducts in the water while filtration techniques such as reverse osmosis, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, and forward filtration are costly and require external energy for their operation. Ceramic water filters that would have addressed these issues are brittle and incapable of filtering viruses. In this work, we report on the efficiency of water purification using a 0.8 T static magnetic field from permanent magnets in defluoridation of sodium fluoride and purification of Escherichia coli, and Rotavirus. The contaminated water was circulated at varying velocities of 0.1 ml/s to 2.0 ml/s at an ambient temperature of 16.0 °C to 40.0 °C for 0.5 hours to 9.0 hours. It was found that when ionized water was circulated under the static magnetic field for nine hours, its pH was lowered by 9.7% and the velocity of water in circulation did not affect the purification efficiency. The static magnetic field equally lowered the replication of Escherichia coli and Rotavirus by 9.8% and 7.1% respectively. Furthermore, 14.1% of defluoridation of water was also achieved. Thus, a 0.8 T static magnetic field was not able to purify water to recommended levels.