Abstract
A mathematical tool has been developed to evaluate the economic advantages of in-situ chemical regeneration of fixed-bed industrial adsorbers of granular activated carbon for cooling water treatment systems in Cuban power plants. Two scenarios of activated carbon (AC) management in a power plant were compared by applying the proposed model. The economic profit by implementing the regeneration strategy as a function of the number of regeneration cycles was determined and optimized. Breakthrough curves were obtained to assess the adsorption performance of the AC after progressive saturation–chemical regeneration cycles using synthetic water and hydrochloric acid, respectively. For the first saturation cycle, the breakthrough time was 272 min and after 10 cycles, it was reduced to 58 min, indicating a decrease of the adsorption capacity of 21%. The AC adsorption performance in terms of saturation time as a function of the number of regeneration cycles was considered one of the tool parameters. The proposed tool allows to determine the optimal number of regeneration cycles for a maximum economic profit in the regeneration strategy. It was demonstrated, using the proposed tool, that after an optimum of seven regeneration cycles, the power plant expends only 26% of the total investment. The simplicity of the tool permits a rapid way to find the most profitable number of regeneration cycles by combining economic, technical and adsorption efficiency parameters in one function, thus improving the AC management strategy at an industrial scale with corresponding environmental and economic advantages, including sustainability.
Highlights
Activated carbons (ACs) are the most widely used adsorbent material
On the other hand, exhausted Granular activated carbons (GAC) was used in order to study dynamic regeneration
In order to know the dynamic conditions of regeneration of the exhausted GAC sample, the performance of breakthrough curve was evaluated every 20 min
Summary
Activated carbons (ACs) are the most widely used adsorbent material. Their adsorbent properties are essentially attributed to their large surface area, microporous structure, high adsorption capacity, a high degree of surface functionality and reactivity, and a favourable pore size distribution, which improves the accessible internal surface and enhances the adsorption rate [1]. Granular activated carbons (GAC) are widely applied as an adsorbent in liquids in several industries, representing around 82% of total AC use. AC should be regenerated (fourth step) because of environmental, industrial and economic benefits (recycling spent AC rather than disposal and replacing it with virgin material is generally less expensive), contributing to sustainability [14,15,16]. Sci. 2021, 11, 11786 dissolve the adsorbed inorganic substances based on their affinity for the reagents Treatment with these chemicals may affect the structure of the AC [21,30]. After exhaustion, GAC is completely removed from the filter (causing a solid waste problem for the plant) and replaced by expensive virgin material
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