ABSTRACT
The objective of this study is to model the breakthrough adsorption curves of Co (II) ions using spent tealeaves in fixed-bed column experiments. Spent leaves of green tea (GT), peppermint tea (PM) and chamomile (CM) were packed in glass columns with a diameter of 2 cm and height of 15 cm, and used as filters for the removal of the pollutant. Aqueous solutions of cobalt (II) ions (100 mg/L) at pH 6 were prepared and pumped against gravity through the columns at a uniform flow rate of 5 mL/min. Breakthrough curves were fitted for the residual concentration data using the Thomas, Yoon-Nelson, and Clark models, with added empirical terms to delineate the lower tail of the breakthrough curve. These mathematical models were successfully linearized using the natural logarithm for parameter estimation. The results reveal that the Co (II) adsorption fits all three models for all the adsorbents. The Thomas model indicated that the calculated adsorption capacities followed the trend: PM > GT > CM with values of 59.7, 25.2, and 24.9 mg/g respectively. Moreover, CM showed the highest adsorption rates with all the mathematical models, whereas Yoon-Nelson theory provided evidence that PM has the longest 50% adsorption breakthrough among the adsorbents. Lastly, morphological and textural studies indicate that all spent leaves are good candidates as adsorbents due to their high surface heterogeneity. This study proposes the use of spent tealeaves as Co (II) adsorbents because they are inexpensive and environmentally beneficial.
Subject(s)
Water Pollutants, Chemical/analysis , Water Purification , Adsorption , Cobalt , IonsABSTRACT
Biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and biodegradable dissolved organic carbon (BDOC) measure the amount of biodegradable organics in water samples using mixed culture seeds. The BOD method relies on the dissolved oxygen reduction while the BDOC procedure, which is more novel, is based on the dissolved organic carbon decrease during the incubation. In this study, three commercial BOD seeds, namely BOD Seed, Bi-Chem and Polyseed, were tested as inocula for BDOC measurement. Standard solutions, secondary effluent and raw surface water samples were used. BDOC exertions provided by the commercial seeds were compared with those obtained from two existing BDOC inocula, indigenous and mixed liquor suspended solid (MLSS) seeds. The commercial and indigenous inocula provided similar exertion trends and BDOC results that were not significantly different for surface water samples while the results for secondary effluent samples were inconclusive. The MLSS inoculum tend to provide slightly higher BDOC values and faster exertion kinetics than the commercial and indigenous inocula. The exertions by all five inocula could be expressed well with first-order kinetics for all cases that enough data were available for kinetics evaluation. The commercial seeds were similar in terms of BDOC determination accuracy and precision, and exertion kinetics. It is possible to use the commercial BOD inocula as seeds for BDOC determination but the results might not be statistically the same as those of the indigenous inoculum for certain types of samples.
