Column operation studies for the removal of dyes and phenols using a low cost adsorbent

Fertilizer plant waste carbon slurry has been investigated after some processing used as efficient adsorbent for the fast removal and rapid adsorption of dyes and phenols using columns. The results reveals that the adsorbent developed from carbon slurry is carbonaceous in nature and having appreciable surface area (380 m2/g) can remove dyes both cationic (meldola blue, methylene blue, chrysoidine G, crystal violet) as well as anionic (ethyl orange, metanil yellow, acid blue 113), and phenols (phenol, 2-chlorophenol, 4-chlorophenol and 2,4-dichlorophenol) fruitfully from water. The column type continuous flow operations were used to obtain the breakthrough curves. The breakthrough capacity, exhaustion capacity and degree of column utilization were optimized and evaluated from the plots. The results obtained revealed that the degree of column utilization for dyes falls in range from 60 to 76% while for phenols was in the range 53-58%. The exhaustion capacities were quite high as compared to the breakthrough capacities and were found to be 217, 211, 104, 126, 233, 248, 267 mg/g for meldola blue, crystal violet, chrysoidine G, methylene blue, ethyl orange, metanil yellow, acid blue 113, respectively and 25.6, 72.2, 82.2 and 197.3 mg/g for phenol, 2-chlorophenol, 4- chlorophenol and 2,4-dichlorophenol, respectively.

Column operation studies for the removal of dyes and phenols using a low cost adsorbent Keywords:

Adsorption , Breakthrough curve , Column , Dyes , Low cost adsorbent , Phenols