REMOVAL OF POLLUTANTS USING RADIAL AND VERTICAL FLOW REGIME REACTORS

Batch and continuous processes were conducted to study the adsorption of methylene blue dye on to three adsorbent materials, commercial activated carbon, chemically activated corncob carbon with phosphoric acid and ion exchange resin (akualite). Batch processes were established to show the effects of solution pH, contact time, adsorbent dosage, agitation speed and initial dye concentration. Two isotherm models, Freundlich and Langmuir fitted with the experimental data found from batch processes, the Langmuir model fitted well than the Freundlich, with maximum adsorption capacities of 16.21, 30.95 and 77.52 mg/g and R2 of 0.952, 0.992 and 0.995 predicted by commercial activated carbon, corncob activated carbon akualite respectively. Series of column test for the three adsorbent materials at different three flow rates (0.2, 0.3 and 0.4 L/min) and three initial dye concentrations (15, 30 and 50 mg/l), the same volume of (775 ml) from adsorbent materials used for both radial and vertical reactors to make a comparison between the capacity of the adsorbent materials each with another and between the performance of radial and vertical flow regime reactors configurations on breakthrough curves behavior. Radial flow regime reactor showed good results in comparison with vertical flow regime reactor