Industrial Wastewater Treatment Employing Surface Modified Activated Carbon

Wastewater need to be treated prior being discharge to the environment. The treated water can be reused and recycled to minimize the use of fresh make up water. There are a few stages involved in wastewater treatment and one of them is through adsorption using activated carbon. Activated carbon adsorbs the organic and inorganic pollutant remains in the water. After sometimes, the activated carbon will be saturated and need to be regenerated. By using activated carbon with high adsorptive capacity, the frequency of regeneration can be reduced. In fact, the amount needed can be lessen, therefore reducing the operating cost. The adsorption capacity can be increased by modifying the surface of activated carbon. Methods for modification will depend on the targeted impurities. This project is mainly focusing on the chemical modification using concentrated Potassium Hydroxide (KOH) solution. Based on the characterization analysis, the morphologies of the activated carbon changed after modification. There were more open pores and the surface area was higher. Adsorption study was conducted to see its effectiveness in adsorbing organic molecules, which is phenol. The equilibrium time for modified activated carbon was much lesser compared to the none modified. Besides that, a few parameters were manipulated to determine its optimum condition. pH 6 was the best pH for adsorption of phenol. Adsorbent dosage and initial phenol concentration was directly proportional to the percent of phenol uptake. The adsorption of phenol follows Langmuir isotherm with correlation more than 0.99. In conclusion, the modified activated carbon shows better performance in adsorbing phenol. The adsorptive capacity was increased from 2.45mg/g, to 5.05 mg/g.