Abstract
Continuous development of industry and civilization has led to changes in composition, texture and toxicity of waste water due to the wide range of pollutants being present. Considering that the conventional wastewater treatment methods are insufficient for removing micropollutants and nutrients to a high level, other, alternative, treatment methods should be used to polish wastewater treatment plant effluents. In this study we developed an alternative, polishing concept for removal of ammonium and micropollutants that could potentially be incorporated in existing wastewater treatment plants. We demonstrated a method to use high silica MOR zeolite granules as an adsorbent for simultaneous removal of the micropollutant sulfamethoxazole (SMX) and ammonium (NH4+) ions from aqueous solutions. At an initial NH4+ concentration of 10 mg/L the high silica zeolite mordenite (MOR) granules removed 0.42 mg/g of NH4+, similar to the removal obtained by commonly used natural zeolite Zeolita (0.44 mg/g). However, at higher NH4+ concentrations the Zeolita performed better. In addition, the Langmuir isotherm model showed a higher maximum adsorption capacity of Zeolita (qmax, 4.08 mg/g), which was about two times higher than that of MOR (2.11). The adsorption capacity of MOR towards SMX, at both low (2 µg/L) and high (50 mg/L) initial concentrations, was high and even increased in the presence of NH4+ ions. The used adsorbent could be regenerated with ozone and reused in consecutive adsorption–regeneration cycles with marginal decrease in the total adsorption capacity.
Highlights
The presence of organic micropollutants in industrial and municipal wastewater has become a major concern (Rogowska et al, 2019; Kamaz et al, 2019)
Preliminary tests on SMX removal by four different types of synthetic zeolites (MOR, FAU, BEA and MFI) indicated that the best ammonium removal was achieved by MOR zeolite (Jiang et al, 2018), and, MOR was used during the experiments
The chemical composition of the zeolite samples was determined by using X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF), using a Panalytical Axios Max WD-XRF spectrometer, and data evaluation was done with SuperQ5.0i/Omnian software (Boatemaa et al, 2018)
Summary
The presence of organic micropollutants in industrial and municipal wastewater has become a major concern (Rogowska et al, 2019; Kamaz et al, 2019). The current paper provides the comparison of a synthetic (MOR) and natural zeolite (Zeolita) in a series of batch experiments in ultra-pure water to evaluate the performance and assess the impact of initial ammonium concentration on ammonium and sulfamethoxazole (SMX) removal efficacy. SMX was chosen as a model compound due to its resistance to remediation and natural attenuation and due to its extensive use in both human and veterinary medicines (Jiang, 2019; Bueno et al, 2012; Loos et al, 2013) This antibiotic has been classified as emerging contaminant, and has been found in water resources at concentration levels from ng/L to μg/L (Bueno et al., 2012; Al Aukidy et al, 2012; Loos et al, 2013). SMX has been detected in the concentration range from 1 to 150 ng/L in WWTP effluents and along Dutch rivers (Zhou et al, 2018; Sabri et al, 2020)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
