An Investigation of a Petrochemical Wastewater Treatment Utilizing GAC: A Study of Adsorption Kinetics

The goal of the present research was to reduce the COD of the typical petrochemical wastewater via adsorption technique using a commercial granular activated carbon (GAC) as adsorbent. The parameters of kinetic models as well as; adsorption isotherms were determined through utilizing the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. The key parameters of kL = 0.0009 L/mg and qm = 33.33 mg/g for the former and nf =0.5 L/mg and kf = 4e-6 mg/g for the latter isotherms were resulted. Moreover, pseudo-first and -second order kinetics equations were implemented. These resulted in coefficients of k1=0.006 min-1 and qe=2025 mg/g as well as; k2=0.011 mg/mg.min and qe=286 mg/g; respectively for 5 cm bed length. In addition, obtaining the correlation coefficients of 0.94 and 0.61 for these 1st and 2nd order kinetics; respectively indicated advantageous use of the former kinetic model. Ultimately; the current investigation paved down the road for predicting the system's behaviour on industrial scale.