Abstract—The capacity of waste polystyrene plastics for hardness groundwater removal was investigated in this study. The wastes of polystyrene were prepared from foam of food packaging and air bubble plastic. They were synthesized into active adsorbent cationic resin. The water hardness was pumped through the designed column with combination of made resin and sand-gravel filters for groundwater treatment. The results revealed that the hardness removal efficiency of added made resins in the system was higher than no added resin (43% vs 12%) and they were below the acceptable Thailand standard for groundwater drinking water of 300 mg CaCO3/L. However, there were no difference in term of hardness efficiency capability for different types of polystyrene plastics and the thickness of resin used in the study.

Index Terms—Hardness water, groundwater, resin, waste plastics, Nakornratchasima.

Prapat Pentamwa, Wipasinun Thipthara and Suparat Nuangon are with the School of Environmental Health, Institute of Medicine, Suranaree University of Technology, Nakornratchasima, 30000. Thailand (e-mail: prapat@sut.ac.th; pong-wt@hotmail.com; krapay_0724@hotmail.com).

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Cite: Prapat Pentamwa, Wipasinun Thipthara, and Suparat Nuangon, "Removal of Hardness from Groundwater by Synthetic Resin from Waste Plastics," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 2, no. 6, pp. 479-482, 2011.