Treatment of Quaternary Solution of Water/Ethanol/Acetaldehyde/Acetic Acid by Activated Carbon Bed

Adsorption technology due to inexpensiveness, simplicity of operation, universal nature and effectiveness has been considered as one of the promising method of separation processes. Thereby in this study an adsorption process was applied by using activated carbon as adsorbent for separation of three pollutants of ethanol, acetaldehyde and acetic acid from aqueous solution. The solution contained 5 wt.% ethanol, 1.5 wt.% acetic acid and 0.2 wt.% acetaldehyde and in this work the effect of three parameters including retention time, solution temperature and adsorbent dosage were investigated. Moreover, the experiments were designed and optimized by RSM method and the results revealed that the optimal retention time, solution temperature and adsorbent dosage are 4 hr, 30°C and 2.8 g adsorbate/cc solution, respectively. The maximum amount of adsorption for ethanol, acetic acid and acetaldehyde was determined to be 65, 85 and 85%, respectively and their adsorption capacity was calculated to be 144.4, 64.2 and 7.6 mg adsorbate/ gr adsorbent.