Treating dye wastewater by an integrated process of adsorption using activated carbon and ultrafiltration

The investigation was undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of using activated carbon (AC) in conjunction with ultrafiltration (UF) in the removal of methylene blue (MB) from aqueous solutions. The combination of activated carbon with UF in this work was to exploit the high adsorption capabilities of AC and the particle removal ability of UF simultaneously. The process was experimentally investigated using granulated and commercial powder-activated carbons. Experiments were conducted in order to study the effects of carbon type, carbon dose, and operating pressure on the process performance. The results obtained showed that the combined process achieved better rejection of dye than the UF process. Furthermore, powder-activated carbons were more effective than the granulated type.

Three types of AC were used as adsorbents in an integrated AC–UF process for the removal of MB dye from aqueous solutions. The combined process achieved better rejection of dye than that by the UF process alone. In fact, no rejection was observed using the UF process while the rejection coefficient of the integrated process reached 85% at a carbon dose of 800 mg/L and a feed dye concentration of 90 mg/L. The types of PAC were more effective than that of the granulated type for dye removal. The dye rejection coefficient increased with an increase in carbon dose while the flux remained almost constant. The permeate flux was linearly dependent on the operating pressure.