Determination of phenol in wastewater by using low cost modified Jordanian natural zeolite. Column and batch experiment

The ability of a modified Jordanian natural zeolite to remove phenol from wastewater has been studied as a function of contact time, initial phenol concentration, pH, and adsorbent calcining temperature. The phenol removal had been studied using column technique. The zeolite was modified using urea and thiourea after calcinations of this nature zeolite. Desorption was achieved with methanol solution (30%, v/v) using column technique. It was found that the treated natural zeolite was suitable for reuse without noticeable loss of adsorption capacity. Kinetic studies for phenol removal were performed using the batch experiment at different temperatures. The obtained experimental data were analyzed by various kinetic models such as: pseudo-second-order, intra-particle diffusion and Elovich models. It was found that the kinetics of phenol removal follows the pseudo-second-order equation. In the intraparticle diffusion, it was noticed that all curves were resolved in two portions and in two separate regions for all temperatures (25, 35, 45, 55 and 65 oC), which indicates multilinearity. The initial portion is attributed to the bulk diffusion (kid, 1) while the linear portion is attributed to intra-particle diffusion (kid, 2). The activation energy of sorption was calculated according to pseudo-second-order rate constant. Results showed that the treated calcinated zeolite with has lower activation energy than that for the untreated calcinated zeolite.