Chapter 13 Design of a Domestic Defluoridizing Unit Shaheda Parveen, Venkata Nadh Ratnakaram , Sireesha Malladi and K. Kiram Kumar Abstract While trace amounts of fluorine are essential for life, its excessive intake leads to a disease known as fluorosis. It is a predominant ailment in majority of the countries inclusive of India. It is caused also by drinking fluoride containing water. Retention of fluorine in bones and teeth occurs through F − –(OH − ) exchange on their inorganic component known as hydroxylapatite. Endeavour of the present study is to design a column using activated alumina as an adsorbent for continuous defluorida- tion of water for domestic purpose. As a part of it, operational defluoridation capacity of alumina was determined by variation of different factors (amount of alumina, time, temperature, added salts). A family of four members was taken as a model. The ini- tial and final fluoride concentrations were taken as 2.0 and 0.7 ppm, respectively. Dimension of the unit (adsorbent bed diameter and height) was determined. Keywords Design · Domestic defluoridizing unit · Fluorosis 13.1 Introduction Human beings and animals suffer from fluorosis due to extended acquaintance with fluoride containing water, air or food. India stands in the top listed countries which are challenged with fluorosis problem in view of obligatory consumption of water having high quantities of fluoride (1–48 ppm) [1]. In India, Andhra Pradesh State is one among the many affected belts by endemic fluoride [2]. As per Indian standards, S. Parveen Department of Chemistry, Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai 625021, India V. N. Ratnakaram (B ) GITAM University, Bengaluru Campus, Bengaluru 561203, Karnataka, India e-mail: doctornadh@yahoo.co.in S. Malladi Department of Science and Humanities, Division of Chemistry, VFSTR, Vadlamudi 522213, India K. Kiram Kumar Department of Chemistry, KBN College, Vijayawada 520001, India © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 B. Subramanian et al. (eds.), Emerging Technologies for Agriculture and Environment, Lecture Notes on Multidisciplinary Industrial Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7968-0_13 173