Acid mine drainage treatment using activated carbon ceramic adsorbent in adsorption column

Abstract

Using powdered activated carbon as the adsorbent is very common nowadays, but the problem arises due to its light structure makes it easily washed out after or during the adsorption process. This research provides a method to combine powdered activated carbon with clay and modify them into ceramic adsorbent, the combination is molded into small balls and then baked in a furnace at a high temperature of 1000° C. Activated carbon has been known for so many years as an effective adsorbent, but its use to adsorb heavy metals in acid mine drainage needs improvements to meet our expectation, chemical activation is one of the methods should be applied to enhance its adsorption capacity. The adsorbent is activated using alkali solution of NaOH 48% to fill its negative charge to enhance its ability in capturing heavy metallic cations contained in acid mine drainage. This research has proved that the adsorbent used is highly effective to reduce heavy metals pollutant in acid mine drainage, its adsorption capacity reaches most favorable results of 72.33% for Mn and 98.81% for Al at activated carbon:clay ratio 11:29 on contact time 300 min where pH increase is from 4 to 7.1. This may prove that the activated carbon ceramics adsorbent is effective enough to solve the acid mine drainage problem.