Development of a novel mobile industrial-scale fluidized adsorption process for emergency treatment of water polluted by aniline: CFD simulation and experiments

• Fluidized bed adsorption was explored as an emergency water treatment method.
• A novel mobile industrial-scale fluidized adsorption process was developed.
• The particular uneven flow structure was found in the LSCFB by CFD simulation.
• CFD simulation of a LSCFB was accomplished for optimizing its configuration.
• Fluidized adsorption possessed significantly shorter hydraulic retention time.

This study developed a novel mobile industrial-scale fluidized adsorption process and preliminarily explored its application in the emergency water treatment. A lab-based Liquid–Solid Circulating Fluidized Bed (LSCFB) was prepared and the flow pattern was studied by validated computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models. The simulation results revealed that the particular uneven flow structure, which could weaken aniline removal performance, occurred with increasing superficial liquid velocity. Accordingly, an optimized distributor design was constructed by the established CFD models; notably, the effect of open angles on the flow pattern, which was often overlooked by previous studies, was mainly discussed. Then, the aniline removal efficiency of LSCFB pre and post optimization was compared. The experimental results demonstrate that dynamic adsorption capacity on aniline reached 70 mg/g under the optimum conditions (initial aniline concentration of 100 mg/L, superficial liquid velocity of 3umf and sorbent dosage of 27 g/L). By comparison with fixed-bed adsorption, the LSCFB possessed significantly higher adsorption rate constants and shorter hydraulic retention time, which indicates that LSCFB could meet emergency treatment requirements in a better way. Finally, the study developed the mobile industrial-scale fluidized adsorption process and estimated process parameters for aniline removal in the Sudden Water Pollution Accident of Zhuozhang River.

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