Pesticide removal and efficiency of different types of granular activated carbon

Abstract

Pesticides as one of the micro-pollutants present a great problem and threat to the environment and human health. They can infiltrate the sources of drinking water by application on the agricultural fields. This article is focused on Atrazine, Terbuthylazine and their metabolites. It is their complex structure that makes them hard to degrade naturally and, thus, water needs to be treated before safe using. Therefore, this article studies adsorption on the two granular activated carbons Filtrasorb 400 and Norit 1240 W. For the determination of the concentration liquid chromatography was used. In this article it is presented that Filtrasorb 400 efficiency (26-40% and 33-45% for atrazine and terbuthylazine respectively) is better than the efficiency of Norit 1240 W (9-27% and 10-24% for atrazine and terbuthylazine respectively).