Performance of composite adsorbent-limestone activated carbon alginate in treating river water
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Date
2018-05-01
Authors
Nurul Aini Zainol Abidin
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Abstract
The rapid growth of urban centers required the dynamic economic activities to develop a nation. However, it leads to the increased pollution of river water which contains wide variations of organic and inorganic pollutants that often exceed the permissible limit of drinking water standard. Application of adsorbents for river water has been studied for years. However, there is no data available on the development of composite adsorbent synthesized from activated carbon (AC) and limestone (LS) as the core materials and alginate binder. In this study, the performance of composite adsorbent was investigated for pre-treatment of drinking water. Composite adsorbent was synthesized for the adsorption of color and turbidity from river water. The characteristics of individual precursor and composite adsorbent for the treatment of river water were investigated. The selection of the best mixture ratio was examined in adsorption batch study. The effects of adsorbent dosage and contact time were investigated. The suitable model of isotherms and kinetics for the composite adsorbent were also discovered. The performance of composite adsorbent using fixed-bed column was also investigated at the last part. The river water samples were collected from Kerian River located at Lubok Buntar, Bandar Baharu, Kedah. The results identified, the mixture ratio (AC: LS) of 3:7 was effective in removing color and turbidity over 92.6% and 89.7%, respectively. The results revealed that the maximum monolayer adsorption capacity of composite adsorbent for the adsorption of color and turbidity were 0.446 PtCo/g and 5.155 NTU/g, respectively. Besides, the adsorption kinetics illustrated the suitability of applying the pseudo-second-order kinetic model. The Freundlich isotherm was found well fitted to the equilibrium adsorption data. Based on the breakthrough curve, the breakthrough point for color and turbidity were less than 6 and less than 1 hour, respectively. The ineffective point for color and turbidity were 20 and 1223 hours, respectively.