Micropollutant Removal Potential by Aged Powdered Activated Carbon
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 142, Issue 11
Abstract
The main objective of this study is to present a first demonstration of the potential of aged powdered activated carbon (PAC) to remove micropollutants during batch tests. Three PACs of varying ages (0, 10, and 60 days) were added () in settled and preozonated settled water, in which a mixture of 10 micropollutants had been spiked at environmentally relevant concentrations. Under these operating conditions, direct competition with natural organic matter was not evidenced when decreasing absorbability of the organic matter through ozonation. All the micropollutants were rapidly adsorbed on the three PACs, and removals superior to 95% were reached within 5 min of contact time for all the micropollutants investigated. PAC aging decreased the adsorption kinetics of atrazine, deethylatrazine, and caffeine. PAC age is thus expected to reduce significantly the process performance at contact times less than 15 min. This study demonstrates that aged PAC suspensions allowing the removal of ammonia and dissolved organic carbon also have the potential to efficiently remove a wide variety of micropollutants by adsorption and comply with current World Health Organization guideline values for microcystin-LR () and atrazine ().
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank J. Philibert, M. Blais, and Y. Fontaine for their great support and technical assistance in the kinetics monitoring and pilot plant operation. The authors also thank K. Aboulfadl for the micropollutants analyses. The authors would also like to acknowledge the Industrial NSERC Chair in Drinking Water and its industrial partners, namely the City of Montreal, Veolia Water Technologies Canada Inc., and the City of Laval, for funding this work.
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Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 142 • Issue 11 • November 2016
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 18, 2015
Accepted: Feb 9, 2016
Published online: Jun 6, 2016
Published in print: Nov 1, 2016
Discussion open until: Nov 6, 2016
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