Evaluation of Toluene Adsorption by Porous Resins: Batch and Continuous Flow Studies

摘要

>Water contaminated with monoaromatic hydrocarbons must be treated before being discharged due to the high toxicity of these compounds. Various treatment methods are currently used, among them processes that involve adsorption. Polymeric resins has been used to treat water and then it is a promising method to be applied for removing various compounds from oily water. In this work, two polymeric resins (divinylbenzene ? DVB and methylmethacrylate‐divinylbenzene ? MMA‐DVB), previously synthesized, were evaluated for removal of toluene from water. Batch tests were performed to study the adsorption equilibrium using the Langmuir and Freundlich models, while the adsorption kinetics were analyzed by the pseudo first‐order and pseudo second‐order models. Besides this, the saturation and regeneration were analyzed with continuous flow tests. The empirical model of Freundlich described the adsorption equilibrium data better than the theoretical model of Langmuir. Likewise, the pseudo first‐order model best represented the experimental data regarding the adsorption kinetics of the systems studied. In the batch tests, the resin DVB was most efficient in removing toluene, but it reached equilibrium with a longer contact time. The continuous flow tests showed that the two systems presented good removal performance; however, DVB column could treat ≈600 bed volumes of water while MMA‐DVB treated only ≈280. The absorbents revealed great potential to be regenerated.