Olive mill wastewater treatment using simple raw and purified jordanian bentonite based low-cost method

Abstract

Olive mill wastewater, a by-product of the olive oil industry, is an environmental problem in Jordan and Mediterranean basin countries, due to its high pollutants load, which resist biological degradation. The aim of this study is to achieve a complete physico-chemical characterization of the samples of the olive mill wastewater collected from a village in Jerash city. Furthermore, investigating a low cost method to treat the olive mill wastewater, depending on natural Jordanian clay; raw bentonite as adsorbent. On the other hand, we tried to enhance the adsorption capacity of raw bentonite and its other characteristics by simple and cheap purification method (purified bentonite). A successive column technique was performed to remove Zn, Fe and Mn ions from the olive mill wastewater, the % uptake for all metal exceeded the 99 %. Moreover, a comparison between raw bentonite and purified bentonite as adsorbent was made using batch technique. We found that the purified bentonite has a higher adsorption capacity and the concentrations of potassium, total chlorine, PO43– and NO3–were decreased. Operating temperature is considerably affected the efficiency of phenolic compounds removal, the experiment was carried out at 298, 303, 313 and 323 K. it can be noticed that % removal increased with the increase of temperature.