Rourkela: Researchers at the National Institute of Technology Rourkela (NIT Rourkela) have developed a patented material using discarded jackfruit peel that removed more than 90 per cent of fluoride from contaminated groundwater in laboratory tests, offering a potential low-cost and sustainable approach to water purification.
The material is made from activated carbon derived from jackfruit peel and modified with zirconium to enhance its ability to capture fluoride from water, officials said on Wednesday.
Excessive fluoride in drinking water can pose serious health risks, including dental and skeletal fluorosis, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The problem has been reported in groundwater sources in several parts of India, making affordable and sustainable treatment methods an important public health priority.
Conventional fluoride-removal techniques, including reverse osmosis, ion exchange and activated alumina, have certain limitations. Reverse osmosis can result in significant water wastage and remove beneficial minerals, while other treatment methods may involve chemical use and generate waste streams that require proper management.
To address these challenges, the NIT Rourkela research team converted discarded jackfruit peel, an agricultural by-product, into activated carbon and modified it with zirconium to improve its fluoride-removal efficiency.
Explaining the technology, Prof Susmita Mishra of the Department of Chemical Engineering at NIT Rourkela said the research aimed to use agricultural waste as a resource for water purification.
“The key idea behind this technology is to use an agricultural waste material as a resource for water purification. We prepared activated carbon from discarded jackfruit peel and modified it with zirconium to improve its ability to capture fluoride from water. The material showed promising results in laboratory tests, removing over 90 per cent of fluoride within approximately 10 minutes under the tested conditions,” she said.
The research team, comprising Prof Mishra and Dr Pratima Minz, a research graduate at the institute, has secured a patent for the technology.
During laboratory-scale experiments, the material achieved more than 90 per cent fluoride removal within approximately 10 minutes at fluoride concentrations of around 1–5 milligrams per litre. The researchers also recorded removal efficiencies ranging from over 90 per cent to 97 per cent within 10–20 minutes under the tested conditions.
The findings indicate that the material could have potential applications in drinking water treatment, particularly in areas where groundwater contains elevated levels of fluoride.
The technology could be useful in rural and semi-urban areas with limited access to reliable water treatment infrastructure, as it may eventually support decentralised, community-level purification systems. Its use of discarded jackfruit peel also offers a waste-to-resource approach by converting agricultural waste into a potentially useful water treatment material.
“The potential of this technology lies in its use of an easily available agricultural by-product to develop a cost-effective material for fluoride removal. In the long term, the technology could contribute to decentralised water treatment solutions for communities in fluoride-affected regions, subject to further testing and validation,” Prof Mishra said.
The research has reached Technology Readiness Level 4 (TRL 4), indicating that the material and the water treatment concept have been validated at the laboratory level.
Based on laboratory-scale experiments, the researchers estimated the synthesis cost at approximately Rs 37 per gram, taking into account the electricity and chemicals used in the process.
The team plans to develop a physical prototype and evaluate the material’s practical applicability, long-term performance and operational costs as part of the next phase of research.
Further testing and validation will be required to establish the technology’s suitability for field deployment and its effectiveness under real-world water treatment conditions.
