Activated Carbon Fixed-Bed Adsorber Design for Treating Chromium Hexavalent Wastewater

Pollution caused by industrial wastewater containing heavy metals is a major issue, primarily due to its toxic nature. A cheap yet effective method to deal with such wastewater is activated carbon adsorption. The purpose of this research is to evaluate and design a fixed bed adsorber with granular activated carbon as an adsorbent to process wastewatercontaining chromium hexavalent (Cr ). Experiments show that the Langmuir isotherm fits the equilibrium data as effectively as the Freundlich isotherm. Activated carbon used in this research is Jacobi 2000 derived from bituminous coal. The lab scale inlet volumetric flow is 100 mL/h with different Cr concentration for each run, 20 and 35 ppm respectively. Based on scale-up calculation with Length of Unused Bed (LUB) method, for superficial flow of 400 L.m .min and service time of six months, the column dimensions for inlet concentration of 20 ppm are 0.62 m diameter and 2.33 m height with 1.87 m carbon bed depth. Concurrently, a slightly bigger column (0.63 m diameter and 2.37 m height column with 1.89 m carbon bed) is necessary for treating inlet concentration of 35 ppm.