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Removal of phenol from petroleum refinery wastewater through adsorption on date-pit activated carbon

  • Muftah H. El-Naas
  • , Sulaiman Al-Zuhair
  • , Manal Abu Alhaija
  • United Arab Emirates University

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

284 Scopus citations

Abstract

Experiments were carried out to evaluate the batch adsorption of phenol from petroleum refinery wastewater on a locally prepared date-pit activated carbon (DP-AC). Adsorption equilibrium and kinetics data were determined for the uptake of phenol from real refinery wastewater and from synthetically prepared aqueous phenol solution. The data were fitted to several adsorption isotherm and kinetics models. Sips as well as Langmuir models gave the best fit for equilibrium isotherms, whereas the kinetics data were best fitted by the pseudo-second order model. The enthalpy of adsorption showed an exothermic nature of the adsorption process. Several chemical and thermal techniques were tested for the regeneration of saturated activated carbon; using ethanol was found to be the most effective with more than 86% regeneration efficiency after four regeneration cycles.

Original languageBritish English
Pages (from-to)997-1005
Number of pages9
JournalChemical Engineering Journal
Volume162
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2010

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

  1. SDG 6 - Clean Water and Sanitation
    SDG 6 Clean Water and Sanitation

Keywords

  • Adsorption
  • Date-pit
  • Petroleum refinery wastewater
  • Phenol
  • Regeneration

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