Synergistic effect on phenol/aniline mixture adsorption on nonpolar resin adsorbents from aqueous solution

In this paper, a new model was developed to describe the synergistic adsorption in the binary system (phenol/aniline in aqueous solution) onto nonpolar resin adsorbent Amberlite XAD-4 and NDA-100. The experimental uptakes of phenol and aniline in all binary-component systems are obviously higher than predicted by Extended Langmuir model, arising presumably from the synergistic effect caused by the hydrogen bonding interaction between the loaded phenol and aniline molecules. The synergistic coefficient of one adsorbate is linearly correlated with the loaded amount of the other. The newly developed model, along with single-component adsorption isotherm parameters and binary-component fitting parameters together, showed a marked improvement in correlating the binary adsorption by comparison with the Extended Langmuir model, which contains the single-component isotherm parameters only.