Process parametric study for ethene carboxylic acid removal onto powder activated carbon using Box-Behnken design

Abstract

Ethene carboxylic acid removal from wastewater using powder activated carbon (PAC) requires a proper process parametric study to determine its optimal performance characteristics. Response Surface Methodology (RSM) is one of the advanced statistical analysis techniques for parametric studies involving a minimum number of trials. The Box-Behnken surface statistical design of experiments was carried out with three factors, i.e., dose, w, temperature, T, and time of contact, t, between the ethene carboxylic acid and the adsorbent, while maintaining the ethene carboxylic acid concentration, C0 = 100 mg/L, as a fixed input parameter. The performance of the Box-Behnken design was analyzed and optimized using Design-Expert software for ethene carboxylic acid removal onto adsorbent using a batch system. The higher values of the correlation coefficients, lack-of-fit greater than 4 and p values < 0.05 are in good agreement with the optimum combination of process parameters, which proves the fitness of the selected model for analyzing the experimental data. © 2007 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.