Performance of an activated carbon adsorber in a water reclamation system with an electrolysis reactor

Abstract

In this study, an activated carbon adsorber was designed to remove chlorine that was generated from an electrolytic reactor in a water reclamation system. Among three commercial granular activated carbons, an appropriate one, which has relatively high surface area with small headloss, was chosen to fill up the adsorber. The chlorine removal efficiencies of the adsorber were found to be 93.3% in total and 73.6% in free chlorine, showing its great effect on chlorine removal. In particular, since total chlorine was removed more than free chlorine, one would expect that as the residence time gets shorter, the chlorine removal efficiency will increase. Thus the results will be useful for continuous experiments to determine the chlorine removal efficiency in the membrane separator for the effluent from the adsorber. Beside chlorine removal, the organic matters can be additionally removed through the adsorber by 13.3% in COD Mn whereas the removal efficiencies of T-N and T-P by the adsorber were found to be similar to those by the electrolytic reactor.