Adsorption removal of aromatic compounds from chemical enterprise’s wastewater

Wastewater from chemical enterprises is a complex multicomponent system that contains insoluble impurities, suspensions, and dissolved substances of mineral and organic nature (surfactants, oxidants, and dyes). Wastewater has a specific color and acidity (pH) from 4 to 12.5. Modern organic and organometallic dyes have a low capacity for biodegradation and resistance to chemical and temperature effects of the environment.

The concentration of colored organic substances in the highly mineralized wastewater of the storage facility "Rubizhansky", the chemical enterprise "Rubizhansky Krasitel", Ukraine many times exceeds the established norms. Polluted colored industrial wastewater contains aromatic sulfonic acids, nitrobenzene, chlorobenzene, phenol, and mineral salts.

The purification of acidic wastewater from the "Rubizhanskyi" storage facility by the sorption method with carbon adsorbents was carried out. The carbon adsorbent KARBON™ (ISPE, NAS of Ukraine) produced from commercial coconut charcoal AquaCarb 607C ("Chemviron Carbon", Belgium) by high-temperature steam-air activation as well as charcoal ZL-302 (Huzhou Beigang&Exp.co, LTD, China) were used.

The adsorbent morphology (porous structure and surface properties) by methods of low-temperature nitrogen adsorption and scanning electron microscopy was determined. It was found that KARBON™ and ZL-302 adsorbents are micro-mesoporous materials with specific surface areas of 1730 and 1523 m²/g. It established the existence of aniline and phenol in wastewater by using the UV-spectroscopy method. The removal of aromatic compounds from wastewater by carbon adsorbents KARBON™ and ZL-302 consists of 99.99% and 94.4%, respectively.

It is shown that carbon adsorbent KARBON™ is effective adsorbent for the successful purification of chemical enterprises’ wastewater from aromatic compounds.