Adsorption Theory for Removal of Toxic Agents in a Flow Process

摘要

An adsorption theory was derived which was shown to apply satisfactorily to dissolved materials adsorbed from sugar solutions upon passing through columns of bone char (W. V. Loebenstein Proc of 5th Tech. Session on Bone Char-NBS 253-275 (1957). The theory allows for the complete characterization of the adsorbate-adsorbent system in terms of two fundamental quantities or parameters. The theory interrelates time, flow velocity, amount of adsorbent, initial and final concentrations of adsorbate in a single equation. It enables one to scale up or down for different bed sizes, flow velocities, concentrations, etc., from one set of conditions to another. There are instances where the characteristic parameters fail to remain constant. These anomalies are traceable to one of two causes: either diffusional effects become appreciable to such an extent that the adsorption process is no longer rate-controlling or the assumed irreversible Langmuir-like mechanism becomes a poor approximation. These effects, due to the inability of the over-simplified adsorption model to account completely for the observed results, must be distinguished from real changes observed and predicted by this theory. The effect of humidity falls in this latter category. The adsorbate-adsorbent system is changed as a result of the introduction of a new component-water.