Fixed-bed column studies of total organic carbon removal from industrial wastewater by use of diatomite decorated with polyethylenimine-functionalized pyroxene nanoparticles

Afif Hethnawi; Abdallah D Manasrah; Gerardo Vitale; Nashaat N Nassar

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2017.10.078

Fixed-bed column studies of total organic carbon removal from industrial wastewater by use of diatomite decorated with polyethylenimine-functionalized pyroxene nanoparticles

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2018 Mar 1:513:28-42. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2017.10.078. Epub 2017 Nov 2.

Authors

Afif Hethnawi¹, Abdallah D Manasrah¹, Gerardo Vitale¹, Nashaat N Nassar²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4, Canada.
² Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4, Canada. Electronic address: nassar@ucalgary.ca.

PMID: 29132103
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2017.10.078

Abstract

In this study, a fixed-bed column adsorption process was employed to remove organic pollutants from a real industrial wastewater effluent using polyethylenimine-functionalized pyroxene nanoparticles (PEI-PY) embedded into Diatomite at very low mass percentage. Various dynamic parameters (e.g., inlet concentration, inlet flow rate, bed height, and PEI-nanoparticle concentration in Diatomite, (%nps)) were investigated to determine the breakthrough behavior. The obtained breakthrough curves were fit with a convection-dispersion model to determine the characteristic parameters based on mass transfer phenomena. The axial dispersion coefficient (D_L) and group of dimensionless numbers; including Renold number (Re), Schmidt number (Sc), and Sherwood number (Sh) were all determined and correlated by Wilson-Geankoplis correlation that was used to estimate the external film diffusion coefficients (Kc) at 0.0015 < Re<55.

Keywords: Adsorption; Breakthrough curves; Convection-axial dispersion model; Diatomite; Fixed-bed; Industrial wastewater; Mass transfer correlation; Nanoparticles; Polyethylenimine.