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Int J Life Cycle Assess (2015) 20:12771286

DOI 10.1007/s11367-015-0920-9

LCIA OF IMPACTS ON HUMAN HEALTH AND ECOSYSTEMS

Life cycle assessment of adsorbents for fluoride removal


from drinking water in East Africa
Teshome L. Yami 1 & Junyi Du 1 & Laura R. Brunson 1 & Jim F. Chamberlain 1 &
David A. Sabatini 1 & Elizabeth C. Butler 1

Received: 30 June 2014 / Accepted: 13 June 2015 / Published online: 30 June 2015
# Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015

Abstract
Purpose Various fluoride adsorbents have been studied for
removal of excess fluoride from drinking water to meet the
World Health Organization (WHO) Guideline value of
1.5 mg/L. Production of these adsorbents emits contaminants
that can affect human health and the environment, but the
extent of these impacts is currently unknown. This study evaluates the environmental impacts of four low-cost and easy to
use adsorbents: activated alumina, aluminum oxide amended
wood char, bone char, and treated alum waste.
Methods The environmental impacts of these adsorbents were
evaluated using life cycle assessment (LCA). The life cycle
stages considered were raw material acquisition, adsorbent
manufacturing, and waste management. The functional unit
was defined as the quantity of adsorbent necessary to reduce
the fluoride concentration of 100,000 L of water from 10 mg/L
to the World Health Organization recommended drinking water
level of 1.5 mg/L. Eco-indicator and the Tool for Reduction and
Assessment of Chemicals and other Environmental Impacts
(TRACI) were used to interpret the environmental impacts.
Results and discussion The results indicate that the environmental impacts of these adsorbents vary greatly using a common functional unit of treating 100,000 L (100 m 3) of
fluoride-impacted water. A key determining factor for the
Responsible editor: Sonia Valdivia
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article
(doi:10.1007/s11367-015-0920-9) contains supplementary material,
which is available to authorized users.
* Teshome L. Yami
Teshome.L.Yami-1@ou.edu
1

School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science, University


of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA

impacts is the fluoride adsorption capacity of the adsorbent


material because this affects how much material is required to
produce safe water. Aluminum oxide amended wood char had
the highest overall negative environmental impact in all impact categories, and the lowest adsorption capacity. The two
adsorbents that performed the best (lowest environmental impact) were the bone char and the treated alum waste.
Conclusions The environmental impacts of the adsorbents
can be reduced by increasing their fluoride adsorption capacity and/or carefully selecting key process components, such as
the distance and means of transportation, particularly for activated alumina. Regeneration and reuse of spent adsorbents
has the potential to minimize impacts to ecosystem quality.
Keywords Activated alumina . Bone char . Drinking water
treatment . Fluoride adsorbents . Life cycle assessment . Wood
char

1 Introduction
It is estimated that more than 200 million people worldwide
consume water with fluoride concentrations above the World
Health Organization (WHO) recommended threshold of
1.5 mg/L (Amini et al. 2008). Consumption of water with
fluoride above this concentration affects human health, ranging from dental to skeletal fluorosis (Dissanayaka 1991;
Fawell et al. 2006). Other health disorders include muscle
fiber degeneration, neurological symptoms, repeated miscarriage or stillbirth, and male sterility (Maheshwari 2006). These
conditions can be physically debilitating and painful.
In most cases, fluoride in groundwater is geogenic, i.e., it
results from local geological formations that are naturally rich
in fluoride (Apambire et al. 1997). For such areas, it is important to either find an alternative water source or to implement

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fluoride removal techniques. Treatment methods such as coagulation, adsorption, membrane processes, and electrolytic
defluoridation have been investigated for removal of excess
fluoride from drinking water (Fawell et al. 2006; Ayoob et al.
2008; Mohapatra et al. 2009). Previous studies indicate that
adsorption is currently the best option for fluoride removal,
especially for developing countries, due to its high efficiency
and low cost of operation and maintenance (Jagtap et al.
2012). However, the production of common fluoride adsorbents has potential negative health and environmental impacts
such as cancer risks, respiratory infections, and global
warming (Classen et al. 2009; Martin and Griswold 2009).
These impacts should be scientifically modeled and estimated.
The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development indicated that environmental impact should be
evaluated for proposed activities that are likely to have significant adverse impacts on the environment (Montalembert et al.
1992). In accordance with this principle, the focus of this work
is to present a life cycle assessment (LCA) of adsorbents for
fluoride removal that illustrates the environmental impacts of
the adsorbents. The aim of LCA is to perform a comprehensive analysis of the life cycle of a product, including raw
material acquisition, manufacturing, use, and waste management (ISO 2006a). LCA can help to select processes and
technologies that have lower environmental impacts. For
example, Gabarrell et al. (2012) compared the environmental
impacts of textile dye treatment processes and identified a
process with environmental advantages using LCA.
In this study, the Bora district in the Rift Valley of Ethiopia
in East Africa was used as the study area with corresponding
model inputs coming from this location. This area was selected
due to the high naturally occurring fluoride concentrations in
groundwater which is the main source of drinking water, observed fluoride health impacts among the residents, and also the
current implementation of some fluoride treatment technologies
in the region (Rango et al. 2012; Brunson and Sabatini 2014).
Four adsorbents were considered in this analysis: (1) commercially available activated alumina (-Al2O3); (2) aluminum oxide amended wood char, produced by firing wood in a furnace
and impregnating it with aluminum oxide; (3) bone char produced by charring cow bone, with the main constituent being
hydroxyapatite; and (4) a waste product from alum production,
referred to hereafter as Btreated alum waste.^
The study was performed using the protocol of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14040/44,
which consists of four phases: (1) goal and scope definition,
(2) life cycle inventory, (3) life cycle impact assessment, and
(4) interpretation (ISO 2006a, b). The objective of this study
was to provide a better understanding of environmental impacts associated with fluoride adsorbents through the quantification and comparison of impacts. This understanding will
provide a greater contribution towards solving the global
drinking water crisis in a way that minimizes the potential

Int J Life Cycle Assess (2015) 20:12771286

for negative environmental impacts. To our knowledge, no


specific investigation has evaluated the environmental impacts of these adsorbents for fluoride removal.

2 Methods
2.1 Goal and scope definition
The goal of this LCA was to compare the environmental impacts of four fluoride adsorbents suitable for emerging regions:
activated alumina, aluminum oxide amended wood char, bone
char, and treated alum waste, and to identify the life cycle stages
or processes associated with these adsorbents that have the
largest negative impacts. The functional unit was defined as
the quantity of adsorbent necessary to reduce the fluoride concentration of 100,000 L of water from 10 mg/L to the WHO
recommended drinking water level of 1.5 mg/L (WHO 2011).
An initial fluoride concentration of 10 mg/L was selected in this
study since the mean fluoride concentration in wells in the Rift
Valley of Ethiopia has been reported to 10 mg/L (Rango et al.
2012). The scope of the study included all stages from cradle to
grave except the use phase, which was determined to be common for all adsorbents. These stages included raw material
acquisition, adsorbent manufacturing, transportation, and waste
management (Fig. 1). It was assumed that during use, the adsorbents are packed in a column through which fluoridecontaining water is passed until an effluent fluoride concentration of 1.5 mg/L is reached. Then, the spent adsorbents are
removed from the column and taken to a waste pile for disposal.
The use phase was excluded from the analysis since (i) it is
exactly the same for all four materials and (ii) the total waste
emissions associated with this stage are negligible.
2.2 Life cycle inventory
A life cycle inventory (LCI) of inputs and outputs of materials
during raw material acquisition, manufacturing, and disposal
of the fluoride adsorbents was obtained using the Ecoinvent v.
2.2 databases (Ecoinvent Center 2010) and a literature review.
SimaPro v. 7.3.3 was used to build life cycle models. A mass
balance method was used to estimate the system input and
output data when appropriate datasets were not available from
Ecoinvent (Table S1 and Section 2 calculations in the
Electronic Supplementary Material).
The fluoride adsorption capacity at an equilibrium dissolved fluoride concentration of 1.5 mg/L (referred to hereafter as Q1.5, with units of mg F/g adsorbent) is a crucial factor
for comparing the magnitude of environmental impacts, because the quantity of adsorbent required for fluoride removal
(the functional unit) is governed by the fluoride adsorption
capacity. The Q1.5 is pertinent to field applications since
1.5 mg/L is the WHO recommended fluoride treatment goal.

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Fig. 1 Flow diagrams showing steps for raw material acquisition, manufacturing, use, and waste management for four fluoride adsorbents

Using Langmuir isotherm parameters reported in the literature, a range of Q1.5 values was estimated for each adsorbent
using the Langmuir isotherm (Eq. (1)):
Q1:5 mg=g

Qmax  K  C e
1 K  C e

where Qmax (mg F/g adsorbent) is the maximum adsorption


capacity, K (L/mg F) reflects the adsorption affinity, and
Cethe equilibrium concentration of the treated waterwas
set equal to 1.5 mg/L. These Q1.5 values, along with the median Q1.5 value for each adsorbent, are reported in Table S2
(Electronic Supplementary Material). Median Q1.5 values
were then used to estimate values of the total mass of each
adsorbent required to treat 100,000 L of water to reduce fluoride from 10 to 1.5 mg/L using Eq. (2):
Total massg

C o C e  V
Q1:5

where Co is the initial fluoride concentration before adsorption


(10 mg/L), Ce is the final concentration (1.5 mg/L), and V is
the total volume (100,000 L). These values of total adsorbent
mass are reported in Table 1 and were used as the functional
unit for the LCI.
2.2.1 Life cycles of the fluoride adsorbents
The processes involved in the life cycle of the four fluoride
adsorbents are illustrated in Fig. 1 and summarized in the
following section.

Activated alumina Activated alumina is created by calcining


aluminum-based materials at a high temperature. In Ethiopia,
activated alumina is primarily imported from South Africa and
then directly applied for fluoride adsorption without further
treatment. Therefore, the existing module of aluminum oxide
in the Ecoinvent database, which represents the manufacturing
process of commercialized activated alumina, was used with
processes of transportation, packaging, and waste management added to complete the module. Typically, activated alumina is transported to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by aircraft and
then delivered to point-of-use (POU) sites in the Rift valley of
Ethiopia by van over an average distance of 100 km.
Aluminum oxide amended wood char Aluminum oxide
amended wood char is a locally available and low-cost adsorbent prepared by amending wood char (which has low fluoride adsorption capacity) with aluminum oxide in order to
improve its fluoride adsorption capacity. The raw materials
for production of aluminum amended wood char are aluminum sulfate and wood chips which are obtained from an alum
factory and the forest management project located in the Rift
valley, respectively. The raw materials are transported using
tractor and trailer to the production sites. Wood chips are
charred at a temperature ranging from 500600 C (Brunson
and Sabatini 2014). The wood charring is done in a furnace for
one hour using kerosene and charcoal for ignition. Aluminum
is produced from bauxite and is transported to smelting sites.
Caustic soda is mixed with bauxite for production of sodium
aluminate which is later treated with CO2 to produce Al(OH)3.

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Table 1

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Total mass of adsorbents needed to lower the fluoride concentration of 100,000 L of water from 10 to 1.5 mg/L

Adsorbent

Median Q1.5 (mg/g) (from Table S2)

Total mass of adsorbent equal to the functional unit (kg)

Activated alumina

0.8

1063

Bone char

1.71

496

Aluminum oxide amended wood char


Treated alum waste

0.13
3.4

6538
250

Sulfuric acid is mixed with Al(OH)3 to obtain Al2(SO4)3 for


wood char amendment. For charring, wood chips are assumed
to be obtained from sawn hardwood timber since it is easier to
handle than softwood in Africa (Seidel 2008). Wood charring
is conducted in a kiln and wood chips are used as both a
charring material and energy source. Wood charring involves
emissions of gases such as CO2, SOx, NOx, CO, and volatile
organic compounds (VOCs), as well as particulates
(Table S1). However, due to unavailability of dioxins and
furans emission data from kilns for wood charring, they were
not included in this analysis. Wood chars are then crushed and
further amended by soaking them in a solution of Al2(SO4)3 at
room temperature for 5 days, followed by rinsing. The aluminum oxide amended wood char is then packaged in woven
bags and transported to POU sites.
Bone char Bone char is produced from waste cow bones,
which are collected from slaughterhouses and transported to
charring facility using tractor and trailer. The Ecoinvent database lacks data on animal bones and thus a bone char module,
which is a set of independent units or processes involved to
produce the bone char, was created in SimaPro v. 7.3.3 using
bone char data complied in Table S1. Emissions data from
cow bone and meat meal combustion in a fluidized bed were
utilized in lieu of bone charring emissions data, which are
unavailable in Ecoinvent. The gaseous emissions from the
bone charring processes are similar to the wood charring processes. In the bone char module, part of the environmental
impact of cattle raising was allocated to bone char production.
An allocation factor of 17 %, which is equal to the weight
fraction of bone in the animal (Terry et al. 1990), was used.
The animal bone charring process is initiated in a kiln using
kerosene and charcoal for ignition after which the bone burns
on its own without requiring additional energy (CDN et al.
2007). Brunson and Sabatini (2009) conducted cow bone
charring at a temperature of 400 C. The bone char is crushed
and rinsed using NaOH solution to remove impurities (CDN
et al. 2007; Arrenberg 2010) and is then packaged in woven
bags for transportation to POU sites.
Treated alum waste The residue generated during the manufacture of alum from kaolin by the sulfuric acid process contains abundant aluminum sulfate and exhibits fluoride adsorption capacity (Nigussie et al. 2007). The alum waste was

obtained from a waste pile close to the premises of the alum


production factory located in the Rift Valley of Ethiopia, and it
was transported to the adsorbent manufacturing center using a
tractor/trailer. The process of obtaining alum waste from the
waste pile and the corresponding impacts from transportation
were included in the scope of this study. The use of sulfuric
acid in alum production is described by (Ismail 2010 Eq. (3)):
Al2 O3  2 SiO2  2 H2 O 3H2 SO4 Al2 SO4 3 2 SiO2 5 H2 O

3
The process results in alum waste containing excess sulfuric acid (pH 3.5) and large volumes of water. These properties
are undesirable for fluoride adsorption and thus the waste
requires pH adjustment and thermal treatment at a temperature
ranging from 100 to 700 C in a furnace for 1 h (Nigussie et al.
2007). The thermally treated alum waste is later neutralized
using 0.1 M NaOH, packaged in woven bags, and transported
to POU sites.

2.2.2 Assumptions
The following assumptions were made in this LCA:
&
&

&

Infrastructure, such as production facilities (e.g., mixers


and tractors) that are repeatedly used, are common to all
processes and thus were not included in the assessment.
No adsorbents are lost during processing and treatment,
except where noted. Minute adsorbent particles escaping
from the treatment processes were not considered due to
data unavailability.
Regeneration of adsorbents was not considered. The waste
disposal scenario considered in this study was that the
waste is piled on the ground, spread out, and dried, with
some additional land required for access to the site. Considering a waste density of 1000 kg/m3 (Doka 2009), a 1m average height of a waste pile, and the need for additional space and access for waste dumping, spreading, and
drying (based on our observation in the Rift Valley of
Ethiopia on July 27, 2013), an area of 0.002 m2 kg waste
was assumed. Emissions from waste piles were omitted
due to lack of relevant data.

Int J Life Cycle Assess (2015) 20:12771286

&
&
&

&

&

Woven bags were used for packaging all of the adsorbents


and 0.01 kg of woven bag was required per kilogram of
adsorbent.
One third of the energy input to thermal treatment processes was considered lost as waste heat to the environment
(Hendricks and Choate 2006).
Land transportation of adsorbents was by tractor with trailer unless otherwise indicated. The average transportation
distance from the location of adsorbent production to the
POU site was assumed to be 100 km, so a round trip
distance of 200 km was used.
All bones considered in this study were cow bones. A cow
on good pasture supplemented with grain gains about
0.9 kg per day (Wilson and Beall 1979). An average Ethiopian cow weighs 300 kg (Tesfaye 2006). Therefore, cows
were considered to have an average lifespan of 1 year
before being slaughtered. Only 50 % of total cow bones
were assumed suitable and available for charring (e.g.,
hooves, tail, bone marrow, and horns are assumed not
suitable for charring). Damage of bones by wildlife and
low collection efficiency are also reasons for less than
complete bone recovery.
The allocation factor for treated alum waste was 20 % (i.e.,
20 % of the emissions associated with alum production
were assigned to the waste) based on an interview made
with the Manager of Awash Melakasa aluminum sulfate
production factory, Ethiopia (personal communication on
July 27, 2013).

2.3 Impact assessment methods and impact categories


Eco-indicator, one of the most widely used damage assessment
methods for life cycle impact assessment (Mark and Renilde
2000) and the Tool for Reduction and Assessment of
Chemicals and other Environmental Impacts (TRACI) (Bare
et al. 2003) were used to interpret the environmental impacts
in this study. TRACI is a midpoint-oriented method that characterizes impact categories based on the impacts that are directly caused by emitted pollutants, while Eco-indicator is an
endpoint-oriented method in which damages to human health,
ecosystems, and resources are assessed at the endpoint-level by
analyzing the midpoint impact categories (Bare et al. 2000).
According to Bare and Gloria (2008), TRACI has the advantage of representing a mid-point on the cause-effect chain between stressors (e.g., air quality, water quality, extreme temperature) and endpoints. The analysis at the midpoint minimizes
damage forecasting since the endpoint estimation is constrained
by the incompleteness of model coverage. The midpoint analysis also simplifies complexity of modeling and communication (Bare 2002). Eco-indicator, an endpoint method, was selected in this analysis since the impacts from the two methods
show similar trends and it has an additional advantage in that it

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enables grouping of the categories to better understand the impacts to the major impact categories of damage to human
health, eco-system quality, and resources.
In Eco-indicator, the human health damage category includes the following impact categories: climate change, ozone
layer depletion, carcinogenic substances, respiratory effects
(organics), respiratory effects (inorganics), and ionizing radiation. The ecosystem quality damage category includes the
following impact categories: land use, acidification/eutrophication, and ecotoxicity. The resources damage category includes the depletion of fossil fuel and depletion of minerals
impact categories.

3 Results and discussion


3.1 Overview
The results from the two impact assessment methods showed
similar trends in terms of the impact in each category (Fig. 2a
b). Specifically, aluminum oxide amended wood char produced the highest impact in nearly all impact categories,
followed by activated alumina, regardless of the method used
(Fig. 2ab), indicating overall agreement between the midpoint (TRACI) and endpoint (Eco-indicator) methods. While
midpoint methods have the advantage of lower uncertainty,
the endpoint method Eco-indicator allows grouping of impact
categories into a smaller number of damage categories (human
health, ecosystem quality, and resources) that have common
units (disability adjusted life years (DALYs), potentially disappeared fraction (PDF)m2 year, and MJ surplus energy,
respectively) that can then be quantitatively compared. Thus,
Eco-indicator was used for subsequent analyses in this project.
Based on this grouping of impact categories, aluminum oxide amended wood char had the greatest adverse impacts in the
human health, ecosystem quality, and resources damage categories (Figs. 3 and 4). The life cycle stage that contributed the
most (more than 60 %) to the adverse impacts for this adsorbent
was raw material acquisition (Fig. 3). Raw material acquisition
includes the processes illustrated in Fig. 1. The high impacts for
aluminum oxide amended wood char are mainly due to its low
Q1.5 value compared to the other adsorbents (Table 1), meaning
that a larger mass of adsorbent, and therefore more materials
processing and waste management activities are needed to meet
the treatment goal for this adsorbent.
Activated alumina was next in terms of adverse impacts in
most damage categories, with the principal impacts coming
from the adsorbent manufacturing stage for the human health
and resources damage categories and from the waste management life cycle stage for the ecosystem quality damage category (Fig. 3). Bone char and treated alum waste had lower
impacts in all damage categories compared to aluminum oxide
amended wood char and activated alumina, with raw material

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Fig. 2 Impact comparison using


(a) Eco-indicator and (b) TRACI.
The y-axis value for the adsorbent
that had the maximum impact in
each category was set equal to
100 %, and other values were
normalized to this maximum
value

acquisition contributing the most to the human health and


waste management to ecosystem quality damage categories
for bone char and treated alum waste (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 Damage assessments for the adsorbents at each life cycle stage.
Abbreviations used are activated alumina (AA), aluminum oxide
amended wood char (AOWC), bone char (BC), and treated alum waste
(TAW)

For the adsorbents studied here, a relationship was observed


between environmental impacts and adsorption capacity i.e., aluminum oxide amended wood char > activated alumina > bone
char > treated alum waste. This trend in environmental impact
can be explained by the fact that a smaller mass of each successive adsorbent was required to meet the treatment goal, and thus,
smaller corresponding emissions were generated from materials
production and processing (see Table 1). This means that in order
for low cost, locally available adsorbents like aluminum oxide
amended wood char to compare favorably with other adsorbents
in terms of environmental impacts, a significant increase in their
specific adsorption capacity or adsorption capacity per mass is
needed. This underscores the need for research to enhance and
optimize the adsorption capacity of wood chars and other locally
available materials that could serve as fluoride adsorbents.
3.2 Process contribution and dominant impact category
analyses
Next, the relative contribution of specific life cycle processes
and specific impact categories to the overall damages were

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Fig. 4 Specific impact categories


contributing to the human health,
ecosystem quality, and resources
damage categories for each
adsorbent. Abbreviations used are
activated alumina (AA),
aluminum oxide amended wood
char (AOWC), bone char (BC)
and treated alum waste (TAW)

assessed for each adsorbent. For three of the four adsorbents


(activated alumina, bone char, and treated alum waste), waste
management activities contributed the most to the ecosystem
quality damage category (Fig. 5). For the fourth adsorbent
(aluminum oxide amended wood char), waste management
contributed more than a third of the damages in this category.
The significant contribution of waste management activities to
the ecosystem quality damage category for all adsorbents indicates the need for research on and implementation of regeneration and reuse of spent adsorbents.
For all adsorbents except bone char, the specific impact
category that contributed the most to the human health damage category was respiratory inorganics, while for bone char,
climate change and respiratory inorganics both contributed
significantly to the human health damage category (Fig. 4).
These impacts were due to transportation (air and land), charring, cattle raising, and thermal treatment (data not shown).
Except for activated alumina, the land use impact category
was the biggest contributor to the ecosystem quality damage
category for all adsorbents (Figs. 4 and 5), due primarily to
waste management activities (data not shown). Finally, the
fossil fuels impact category was the largest contributor to the
resources damage category for all adsorbents (Fig. 4), due to
use of fossil fuels throughout adsorbent acquisition and
manufacturing (data not shown).
Bone char and aluminum oxide amended wood char had
higher impacts in the climate change impact category than
activated alumina and treated alum waste (Fig. 2a) mainly
due to CO2 emissions from charringa step that is not involved in the production of activated alumina and treated alum
waste. Emissions of CO2 from wood and cow bone charring
contributed the most to impacts in the climate change impact
category (data not shown). While these impacts can, in theory,
be mitigated by carbon offsets, development of adsorbents
with higher adsorption capacities is likely to be a more

effective strategy for mitigating climate change impacts for


char-based adsorbents.
For activated alumina, transportation by air and land contributed the most to the human health, ecosystems quality and
resources damage categories (Fig. 5). Also, for activated alumina, the process that contributed the most to both the respiratory inorganics and fossil fuel impact categories was the use
of aircraft to transport activated alumina from Johannesburg,
South Africa, to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, followed by waste
management (data not shown).
For aluminum oxide amended wood char, charring contributed the most to the human health damage category, and acquisition of wood chips contributed the most to the ecosystem
quality and resources damage categories (Fig. 5).
For bone char, cattle raising produced the majority of impacts in the human health and ecosystem quality damage categories, and obtaining cow bone (mainly transportation) contributed the most to the resource damage category (Fig. 5).
The respiratory inorganics and climate change impact categories contributed the most to the human health damage category
due to emission from the charring process, transportation, and
cattle raising, which leads to methane emissions.
For treated alum waste, sulfuric acid production contributed the most to the human health damage category and alum
manufacturing contributed the most to the ecosystem quality
damage category (Fig. 5). The process that contributed the
highest impact to the resource damage category was the process of obtaining the alum waste due to the use of land for
waste storage followed by thermal treatment to remove moisture and activate the adsorbent.
3.3 Sensitivity analysis
A sensitivity analysis was conducted to evaluate the processes with the greatest environmental impacts, and thus the

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Fig. 5 Processes contributing to each damage category for each adsorbent

greatest potential for improvement. Initial review of the LCI


indicated that there was potential improvement in the respiratory organics and fossil fuels impact categories for activated alumina. Thus, processes contributing to emissions in
these impact categories, particularly transportation, were selected for sensitivity analysis.
The assumed process of transporting activated alumina
from Johannesburg, South Africa, to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by plane (5000 kma process called BSouth Africa by
air^ in Fig. 6) contributed the most to the respiratory inorganics and fossil fuels impact categories (Fig. 4) due to the
substantial fuel consumed during the long-distance flight.
To reduce the impact, the following reasonable alternative
scenarios involving more energy efficient means of transportation and/or a closer supplier of activated alumina than
Johannesburg were evaluated:
1. Transporting activated alumina from the port city of Durban, South Africa, to the Republic of Djibouti in East

Africa by ship (6500 km) and then land transportation to


Addis, Ababa, Ethiopia, by van (500 km) (denoted BSouth
Africa by ship^ in Fig. 6);
2. Transporting activated alumina from the port city of Mumbai, India, to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by aircraft (4000 km)
(denoted BIndia by air^ in Fig. 6);
3. Transporting activated alumina from the port city of Mumbai,
India, to the Republic of Djibouti in East Africa by ship
(3500 km) and then land transportation to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by van (500 km) (denoted BIndia by ship^ in Fig. 6).
The modeling results indicate that scenario 3, i.e., India by
ship, led to the lowest environmental impacts in both the respiratory organics and fossil fuels impact categories. Comparison of India by air and India by ship shows the significant
impact of mode of transportation on the respiratory organics
(Fig. 6a) and fossil fuels (Fig. 6b) impact categories, since the
total transportation distance for these two scenarios is identical. Likewise, when both the mode of transportation and the

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Fig. 6 Effects of transportation


distance and means of
transportation of activated
alumina on the a respiratory
inorganics and b fossil fuels
impact categories

distance were varied (compare South Africa by air and South


Africa by ship, the respiratory organics impact category was
lowered significantly (Fig. 6a), and the fossil fuels impact
category was lowered by about 75 % (Fig. 6b), indicating
the importance of transportation distance on environmental
impacts, particularly fossil fuel depletion. These observations
suggest that some of the adverse impacts of activated alumina
illustrated in Figs. 2 and 3 would be decreased in cases where
the adsorbent was used closer to where it is manufactured.

use of a different aluminum amendment process, TchomguiKamga et al. (2010) produced an aluminum treated wood char
with a Q1.5 of 1.1 mg/gan eightfold increase compared to
the Q1.5 value of 0.13 mg/g reported in Table 1. In addition,
Du et al. (2014) synthesized a high efficiency aluminum
(hydr) oxide with Q1.5 of 22 mg/ga tremendous increase
compared to the Q1.5 of activated alumina reported in Table 1.
These results indicate that significant improvements in Q1.5
are possible for aluminum oxide amended wood char. This is
thus targeted as an important focus for future research.

3.4 Effect of adsorption capacity on climate change


impacts for aluminum oxide amended wood char

4 Conclusions and recommendations


We observed that for all materials, the environmental impacts
were inversely related to adsorption capacity, and therefore, the
adsorption capacity was varied in a break-even analysis. Aluminum oxide amended wood char and bone char were considered
for the break-even analysis since they have similar charring processes, while activated alumina and treated alum waste do not.
Also, it would be desirable to increase the adsorption capacity of
aluminum oxide amended wood char so that its impacts would
be comparable to those of bone char, which is being used with
greater frequency in East Africa as a result of the installation of
bone charring facilities in the Rift valley of Ethiopia and Kenya.
Due in part to charring, these two adsorbents had the largest
impacts in the climate change (Eco-indicator, Fig. 2a) and global
warming (TRACI, Fig. 2b) impact categories.
The climate change impacts of aluminum oxide amended
wood char and bone char were compared for a range of hypothetical Q1.5 values of the wood char, while holding the Q1.5
value of bone char invariant at the value reported in Table 1.
The climate change impacts of the two adsorbents were found
to be equal at the break-even point where the Q1.5 of aluminum oxide amended wood char was approximately eight
times the value reported in Table 1 (i.e., 1.04 mg/g). Through

The results of the LCA study investigating four adsorbents


indicate that treated alum waste provides the alternative with
the least impacts in the three damage areas of human health,
ecosystem quality, and resource availability. The life cycle
processes with the highest impacts were transportation for
activated alumina, wood charring for aluminum oxide
amended wood char, bone charring and cattle raising for bone
char, and sulfuric acid production for treated alum waste. For
the adsorbents examined in this study, those with higher fluoride adsorption capacities showed lower environmental impacts, perhaps due to the lower corresponding impacts from
materials processing for the more efficient adsorbents. Further
research is suggested to understand whether this relationship
extends to other adsorbents. Based on the results reported
here, however, the most effective strategy for minimizing climate change impacts is development of locally available adsorbent materials that do not require transportation over long
distances and that have high adsorption capacities. When unavoidable, transport over long distances by ship is preferable
to transport by plane. Regeneration and reuse of spent adsorbents would minimize the impacts associated with their

1286

manufacture, and also reduce adverse impacts to ecosystem


quality due to their disposal. Therefore, it is imperative for
developing countries to adopt materials and processes with
low environmental impact for water purification and use safer
technologies whenever possible. This and other studies highlight the need for continued development and dissemination of
life cycle inventory data appropriate for developing countries
in order to promote sustainable development.
Acknowledgments This work was funded by the National Science
Foundation (CBET1066425), the University of Oklahoma Water Technologies for Emerging Regions (WaTER) Center, the Sun Oil Company
Endowed Chair, and the Ken Hoving Graduate College Fellowship. The
authors thank Jessica Johnston for review of the manuscript. We also
thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their valuable comments on the manuscript.

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