Treatment of petroleum refinery wastewater by adsorption using activated carbon fixed bed column with batch recirculation mode

N. Kassob, Ali; H. Abbar, Ali

doi:10.30772/qjes.v15i2.820

	Treatment of petroleum refinery wastewater by adsorption using activated carbon fixed bed column with batch recirculation mode
Al-Qadisiyah Journal for Engineering Sciences
Volume 15, Issue 2, June 2022, Pages 101-111 PDF (646.19 K)
Document Type: Research Paper
DOI: 10.30772/qjes.v15i2.820
Authors
Ali N. Kassob^* ¹; Ali H. Abbar²
¹Department of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Al-Qadisiyah, Iraq
²Biochemical Engineering Department, Al-Khwarizmi College of Engineering, University of Baghdad, Baghdad, Iraq
Abstract
Water pollution and the lack of access to clean water are general global problems that result from the expansion of industrial and agricultural activities. Petroleum refinery wastewaters consider as a major challenge to the environment and their treatment is mandatory. The present work concerns with the removal of chemical oxygen demand (COD) from petroleum refinery wastewater taken from Iraq's Al-Diwaniyah petroleum refinery plant by using an activated carb fixed-bed column operated at a batch recirculation mode. The fixed bed column used in this work was composed of three sections: upper, central, and bottom compartments. The bottom compartment serves as a feeding chamber to the central adsorption chamber while the upper compartment serves as a collecting effluent chamber. By adopting response surface methodology (RSM), in the pacts of various operational parameters such as packing level, pH, and time on the COD removal efficiency were investigated. The optimal conditions were an activated carbon packing level of 80%, pH of 5.7, and adsorption time of 73 min approximately, which resulted in a COD removal efficiency of 96.70%. The results indicated that the packing level of activated carbon had a major effect on COD elimination followed by pH, while time had a minor effect. The model equation's adequacy was demonstrated by its strong R² value (0.975). The present study demonstrates that the adsorption system by activated carbon is an effective method for removingcondomODom Al-Diwaniyah petroleum refinery wastewaters.
Keywords
COD removal; Adsorption; Activated carbon; Response surface methodology; Wastewaters

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