The trial of regeneration of used impregnated activated carbons after manganese sorption

In recent years, the increasing level of underground water shows a high iron and manganese concentrations, thus, the technology of water treatment requires application of processes for Fe and Mn removal. Within a literature, many treatment processes have been proposed for manganese removal from drinking water, however very often they do not comply with the obligatory quality standards and are not suitable for practical application. Activated carbon adsorption is considered to be a particularly competitive and effective method, mainly because of large specific surface area. In addition, due to physical and chemical properties, activated carbon has a wide range of applications, e.g., it is used as a sorbing and catalytic agent or a catalyst carrier.The main advantage of activated carbon is the ability to regenerate, which significantly reduces the costs of the water purification process. This process also allows to regain valuable, previously adsorbed substances. However, a regeneration of impregnated activated carbons has not been greatly investigated.The paper presents the results of research on regeneration of impregnated active carbon after Mn (II) removal from potable water. ROW 08 Supra carbon impregnated by the KMnO4 solution at concentration of 64 g/dm3 was used for the experiments. The process of regeneration was carried out under static conditions by use of KMnO4 solutions in range of 32, 64 and 128g/dm3, respectively. After the regeneration, the impregnated active carbon was used again for Mn (II) removal. KMnO4-modified adsorbent showed a higher tendency for adsorbing Mn from solution. Increase of catalytic properties regenerated carbon and high exchange capacity observed emphasized the potential use KMnO4-modified activated carbon in filtration systems.