H-Acid Effluent Treatment Using Low-Cost Adsorbent and Modified Multi Solute Adsorption Route

Adsorption is one of the most commonly and effectively used operation for treatment of Industrial wastewater. The conventional flow sheet for treatment Industrial waste water treatment used by most of the industrial units includes primary treatment, followed by secondary and tertiary treatments. During primary treatment, viz. Neutralization of the wastewater, the salt concentration increases substantially and salts in high concentration inhibit biological activity in the subsequent stages and may cause an increase in non-settleable suspended solids in the treated wastewater. Hence, an alternative flow sheet is proposed, wherein adsorption with low-cost adsorbent – Lignite could be employed prior to the conventional primary treatment for increasing efficiency of the biological treatment. Experiments have been performed with adsorbents – Activated Carbon & Lignite on Acidic and Neutralized streams of effluent samples from H acid dye Unit. The results obtained are highly motivating as the Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) reduction is found to be much better in this modified route for the both adsorbents. Further, the exhaustive experimental data has been obtained and the tabulated results are extremely optimistic and suggest that the proposed flowsheet gives better results in less time. Therefore, it can be concluded that changing the conventional flowsheet to the proposed modified flowsheet will lead to increased capacity of the existing waste water treatment facility. Further, adsorbents – Lignite also gives comparable adsorption capacity in comparison to activated carbon. Lignite being the cheapest adsorbent in comparison to Activated Carbon, it is expected to be highly cost-effective proposal. Thus, Lignite can be replaced by Activated Carbon and conventional effluent treatment flowsheet can be modified to have increased output and double cost benefits.