Removal of quaternary ammonium compounds in ion exchange process

Abstract

The study attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of ion exchange process in cationic surfactant (benzalkonium chloride, BAC) removal from model solutions. Four commercial cation-exchange resins were chosen for the batch tests in four doses (2.5-20 mL L-1). The experiments included evaluation of the following parameters on ion exchange efficiency: resin characteristics and dose, presence of inorganic salt and pH of treated solution. The ion exchange process was found to be very effective in cationic surfactant removal - two of tested resins allowed to remove up to 80% of contaminant after contact time of 40 minutes, the last two - after 60 minutes of mixing in all range of doses. The presence of electrolyte neither pH change has no essential effect on surfactant removal efficiency. The analysis of the ion exchange isotherms showed that the strongly-acidic macroporous resin C150 H was characterized by the highest BAC ion exchange capacity (153.8 mg mL-1), while the weakly-acidic gel resin C104 showed the best affinity of the exchanged ions to the resin matrix.