2013 AIChE Annual Meeting

(400b) Modeling and Prediction of Sorption of Aqueous Contaminants

Authors

Lemcoff, N. - Presenter, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Hartford
Bonelli, P., PINMATE



Industrial effluents are often contaminated and need to be processed before their discharge in bodies of water. One group of contaminants are the dyes used in textile, paper and plastic industries.  In particular, most dyes used by the textile industry are synthetic and derived from either coal tar or petroleum-based intermediates. In order to develop and/or test adsorbents that can be used in the removal of these contaminants, probe molecules are normally used. Two of these dyes, which have been studied by several researchers, are methylene blue and rhodamine B.

In this work, a model was developed to predict the dynamic performance of biosorbents in the removal of binary mixtures of dyestuffs. Model parameters were obtained from single component adsorption data and from batch and dynamic studies on alkaline treated cypress cone chips. Numerical simulation studies of the sorption process were carried out using gPROMS, commercial computer simulation software. Langmuir multicomponent isotherm, modified to account for the interaction of the components, and a linear driving force model were used to predict the sorption of the binary mixture. The predicted breakthrough times and roll-up behavior are in good agreement with the experimental results.

References

M.E.Fernandez, G.V.Nunell, P.R.Bonelli, A.L.Cukierman, Bioresource Technology 106, 55-62 (2012)

M.Ghaedi, S.Hajati, B.Barazesh, F.Karimi, G.Ghezelbash, Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 19, 227-233 (2013)