Selective removal of boron from industrial wastewater containing high concentration of ammonia by radiation grafted fibrous adsorbent in fixed bed column

Abstract

Removal of boron from real industrial wastewater containing high concentration of ammonia was investigated using a fibrous adsorbent bearing glucamine groups obtained by green method. The adsorbent was prepared by radiation induced emulsion grafting (RIEG) of glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) onto nylon-6 fibres and subsequent treatment with N-methyl-D-glucamine (NMDG) under controlled conditions. The performance of the obtained adsorbent was tested for adsorption of boron from a real industrial wastewater containing high concentration of ammonia in comparison with a synthetic aqueous solution using in a fixed bed-column under different feed space velocities (SV). The dynamic adsorption data of the fixed column was tested against three most common mathematical adsorption models: Yoon–Nelson, Thomas and Modified Dose-Response (MDR) models to predict breakthrough curves and determine the column design parameters. The results showed that the experimental breakthrough curves were best fitted by MDR model. The adsorbed boron was eluted with 1 M HCl solution and the adsorbent was regenerated for stability evaluation using 5 adsorption/desorption cycles. The results suggest that the obtained adsorbent has a strong potential for industrial pilot scale boron removal applications.