Surfactant-enhanced carbon regeneration in liquid phase applications

Abstract

Surfactant-Enhance Carbon Regeneration (SECR) is a novel, in-situ process in which a concentrated surfactant solution is used to desorb the adsorbed solutes from the spent carbon. The concentrate surfactant which has a concentration higher than its CMC will form aggregated molecule called micelles. The solute will solubilize into the micelle. Residual adsorbed surfactant can be pulled out from carbon by a water flush. The surfactant used can be selected so that it has extremely low toxicity and is biodegradable. In this study, phenol was used as the adsorbed solute and sodium dodecyl sulfate was used as the anionic surfactant. This study demonstrates the effects of low concentration of organic solute (phenol) loading by measuring the breakthrough curves for subsequent adsorption cycles following the regeneration. At the low concentration of phenol, the adsorption was mainly affected by equilibrium limit, but when the concentration of phenol increased, the mass transfer limit tended to increase the effect on adsorption. More than 26% of adsorbed phenol was removed from the bed when applied with a moderate amount of surfactant regenerant solution.