REMOVAL OF MERCURY AND FURFURAL USING ADSORPTION AND BIOSORPTION IN FIXED BED REACTOR

The adsorption / biosorption of mercury and furfural onto granule activated carbon and granule dead anaerobic sludge in a single system was studied. Four mathematical models were tested for best fitting experimental results obtained from granule activated carbon and granule dead anaerobic sludge column. A general multi-component rate model(GMRM),homogenous surface diffusion model (HSDM),second order reversible reaction model (SRRM) and quasi chemical kinetic model (QKM). The results of the study show that, GMRM can fit the experimental results well. GMRM includes axial dispersion, mass transfer resistance and pore diffusion coefficient provides a good description of the adsorption/biosorption process for single system in fixed bed adsorber. MATLABE software was used to solve the equations of GMRM model numerically. The time for reaching breakpoint for faurfural and mercury biosorption was longer than that for adsorption process at constant conditions (flow rate, bed height and initial concentration). This was due to higher affinity for granule dead anaerobic sludge than granule activated carbon for furfural and mercury biosorption. Furfural was the strongly adsorbed component and mercury was the weakly adsorbed component and the biosorption of process was reveres.