Abstract
In drinking water treatment, it is difficult to predict the remaining service life of a partially spent granular activated carbon bed when contaminants are intermittent, such as taste and odor-causing compounds. A laboratory-scale minicolumn test using a grab granular activated carbon (GAC) sample from a full-scale bed was assessed using pore and surface diffusion model (PSDM) simulations. The impact of bed depth and flow velocity on the performance of preloaded GAC was negligible provided that the minicolumn test matched the same empty bed contact time as at full scale. The impact of minicolumn diameter was insignificant when the minicolumn to GAC particle diameter ratio was larger than 13. Minicolumns using a single representative grain size fraction were predicted to simulate full-scale beds with reasonable accuracy. The impact of temperature may be significant. A potential limitation of the test is that the media may be harvested at different GAC bed depths: accuracy requires that the adsorption capacity and kinetics of the adsorbate be relatively constant across those depths.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code generated or used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request (Figs. 1–9).
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful for financial support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada, Project No. IRCPJ 428979-16.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 146 • Issue 1 • January 2020
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 3, 2018
Accepted: May 30, 2019
Published online: Oct 30, 2019
Published in print: Jan 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Mar 30, 2020
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Activated carbon
- Building design
- Carbon
- Chemical compounds
- Chemical elements
- Chemicals
- Chemistry
- Design (by type)
- Diffusion
- Diffusion (porous media)
- Drinking water treatment
- Engineering fundamentals
- Engineering materials (by type)
- Engineering mechanics
- Environmental engineering
- Field tests
- Full-scale tests
- Granular materials
- Laboratory tests
- Materials engineering
- Odors
- Pollutants
- Service life
- Tests (by type)
- Thermodynamics
- Transport phenomena
- Water treatment
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