Phenol is one of the common contaminants observed in many wastewater industries. It is toxic, hazardous, carcinogenic and listed as a priority pollutant by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This research aimed to establish the efficacy of activated carbon derived from walnut shell in extracting phenol from aqueous solutions using a fixed-green bed column adsorption system. The effect of parameters affecting the adsorption process including the initial concentration of phenol, bed ratio, and flow rate, was studied. The results showed that the highest percentage of phenol removal by the activated carbon is 86.2% at pH 7, initial concentration of phenol 0.001M, bed ratio 1:3 sand/activated carbon, and flow rate 10 ml/min. The breakthrough behavior of the fixed-bed adsorption process was studied. It was observed that the adsorption process equilibrium is practically reached after 105 minutes. The adsorption column dynamic behavior was investigated using three numerical models. The results confirmed that Thomas and Yoon-Nelson models are found more fitted to the adsorption experimental results. Moreover, modeling and interpretation of the column adsorption isotherms predicted that the Freundlich isotherm model is better than Langmuir isotherm model to describe the column adsorption data indicating that the phenol adsorbed molecules are not restricted to monolayer formation and the mechanism of adsorption is chemo-sorption. Briefly, the results of this study pointed out that the activated carbon derived from the walnut shell is not only a low-cost green adsorbent but also has high performance in the removal of phenol from aqueous solutions.
CITATION STYLE
Kamal, I., Albadran, F., Jaafar, H., Ali, D., & Alfaize, M. (2020). Continuous flow adsorption for phenol removal using environmentally friendly naturally derived bed. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 928). IOP Publishing Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1088/1757-899X/928/2/022050
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