Assessment of uranium contamination in groundwater of Mansa district, Punjab (India) and its remediation using SnO2

Abstract

The high prevalence of uranium in water has the potential to cause significant radio and chemotoxicity, which could lead to serious health issues affecting the kidneys, brain, liver, heart and other organs. Consequently, the consistent assessment of U levels in water sources and the development of effective remediation techniques for its extraction have garnered significant global interest. The present work was conducted to evaluate uranium contamination in groundwater of Mansa district in SW-Punjab region and observed a mean uranium concentration of 95.46 mu g/L. About 68 % of the groundwater samples had uranium levels higher than the 30 mu g/L limit set by the WHO in 2011. For the remediation of U(VI), SnO2 was synthesized using the sol-gel method and showed a maximum Langmuir adsorption capacity of 163.07 mg/g under optimal adsorption parameters: pH (6), adsorbent dosage (0.5 g/L), and contact period (90 min). Hence, prepared SnO2 was identified as efficient and effective for the remediation of uranium-contaminated groundwater samples.