Abstract
Pollution deals with the modification of the natural physical and chemical environment of the earth of human activity. Phenol is one of the most toxic industrial pollutants and even at low concentration it is reported to affect water quality and is harmful to human health. The objective of this study is to contribute in the search for less expensive adsorbents and their utilization possibilities for agricultural waste by – products such as rice husk, for the elimination of phenol from aqueous solution. Experiments have been conducted to examine the liquid – phase adsorption of phenol from aqueous solution by rice husk RH and activated rice husk ARH(pretreated by 13 M H2SO4 with 0.5 NaOH and thermally treated at 573k). Fluidized bed column kinetic and isotherm studies were carried out evaluate the effect pH 2 -10, initial phenol concentration 50 – 200 mg/l ,different bed height 5 – 30 cm , different temperature 298 – 338 K and different flow rate 1 – 7 cm3/s , with 90 min operated the system. The sorption data obtained from studies at optimized conditions have been subject Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm studies. The data fits well to both the Langmuir and Freundish isotherm models indicating favorable and monolayer adsorption. X – ray diffraction analysis , which indicates that the RH and ARH mainly consist of amorphous materials. The adsorbent were characterized using FTIR, it was found that the pretreatment of rice husk increase the specific surface area and changed the functional groups , therefore leads to increase the capacity of adsorption