EFFECT OF STORAGE CONDITION OF PEA POD ON WATER SOFTENING

Natural coagulants are considered affordable and efficient substitutes to chemical coagulants for use in developing countries where raw materials such as cicer arietinum (green pea) are readily available. Polluted water is estimated to affect about 1200 million people and contribute to the death of 15 million children in the world per year. The excessive use of chemical coagulants can affect human health in the long term; aluminum has been indicated to be a causative agent of neurologic diseases such as senile dementia. researches confirms the high impact of pea pod as a softener in water treatment, but much researches have to be done to ascertain the effects of its storage on water softening. Therefore, the research aims at finding effect of storage condition (temperature and ph) effect of pea pod on water softening. a suitable method was employed for the pea pod processing. Pea pod was prepared and ground to powder. Phytochemical analysis of the pea pod was done. 10% stock solution of the extract was prepared, jar test for water softening, was carried out for high, medium, low untreated synthetic waters, kura surface (river) water and zoo road well water, the process was repeated for stored pea pod powder at varying temperature and ph values. Hardness removal, by the filtrates, increased with increase in initial hardness. Also, ph increase of pea pod towards alkalinity causes significant increase in hardness, while temperature increase increases the rate of hardness removal; p-values range was high, signifying that there is significant difference between the percentage hardness removal of pea pod powder not stored and that stored for the varying temperature and ph values.