A study on various design shape of commercial granular activated carbon for textile wastewater filteration

Abstract

In Malaysia, an increasing number of hazardous compounds are being discharged into the mainstream and downgrade the water quality. Textile industry was an example from which pollutants produced and discharged to our mainstream. The main pollution source of textile wastewater comes from the dyeing and finishing process included with the present of high suspended solid (SS), chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), colour, phosphate and other soluble substances. Most of these can be harmful if discharged directly to the mainstream without any precaution. Polluted water can be treated with the use of activated carbon as a media of adsorber. Therefore, this project is aimed to study the effect of using various design shape of commercial granular activated carbon (GAC) for the textile wastewater filteration purposes. Seven types of pollutants contributor will be observed which are total suspended solid (TSS), BOD, COD, colour, phosphate, nitrate and sulfate to determine the best design shape. As a result four types of different GAC design show different results of filteration with the best BOD, colour, COD, TSS, nitrate and sulfate removal was hollow cylinder granular activated carbon (HCGAC), solid granular activated carbon (SGAC)-I, SGAC-II, SGAC-I, SCGAC-III and SCGAC-I respectively. SCGAC-I design presented to be the best design shape for the filteration. All the design failed to remove phosphate because of GAC source. This finding could help textile industries to determine and consider the novel filteration system in order to ensure textile effluent treated effectively.