Adsorption of resorcinol and catechol on granular activated carbon: Equilibrium and kinetics

✍ Scribed by Arinjay Kumar; Shashi Kumar; Surendra Kumar

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 227 KB
• Volume: 41
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0008-6223
• DOI: 10.1016/s0008-6223(03)00431-7

✦ Synopsis

Investigations were conducted in the batch mode for studying the adsorption behavior of resorcinol and catechol on granular activated carbon from a basic salt medium (BSM) at pH¯7.1 and temperature¯30 8C. The isotherm data were correlated with six isotherm models, namely Langmuir, Freundlich, Redlich-Peterson, Radke-Prausnitz, Toth, and Fritz-Schlunder's using a nonlinear regression technique. It is observed that the catechol isotherm data may be represented by Redlich-Peterson, Radke-Prausnitz, Toth, and Fritz-Schlunder models with similar accuracy (max. dev. 12%). And the resorcinol data may be represented by Freundlich, Redlich-Peterson, Radke-Prausnitz, and Fritz-Schlunder models equally well (max. dev. 15%). Freudlich being a simple model is recommended for resorcinol. At the conditions investigated in this study, catechol is adsorbed to a greater extent than resorcinol. This is due to the compound's solubility and position of the -OH group on the benzene aromatic ring. The kinetics of adsorption have been found to be diffusion controlled and the 213 2 value of effective particle diffusion coefficients is of the order of 10 m / s. Three distinct phases of kinetics-rapid, medium, and slow-have been observed. These results should be useful for the design of adsorbers for removing these pollutants.