Roles of Background Compound Molecular Size and Adsorbent Pore Size Distribution in Competitive Adsorption on Activated Carbon

153 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007.For the effect of PSD, four commercially available PAC produced by Norit Netherlands, which included W20, W35, SA Super and SA UF, as well as one proprietary adsorbent which consisted of extensive secondary micropore and mesopore volumes, labeled as Pellet II, were evaluated for atrazine adsorption in the presence of CR in order to assess the role of PSD on competitive adsorption. The capacity for CR adsorption correlated well with pore volume between 13 and 350 A. Atrazine adsorption capacity reduction caused by CR was similar for the four Norit PAC, but was significantly higher for Pellet II. Kinetic experiments showed that increasing secondary micropore and mesopore volumes could alleviate pore blockage effect, that is, an adsorbent could adsorb more CR before the decrease in atrazine Ds become significant. At the highest CR surface loading achieved, atrazine Ds decreased by more than two logarithmic orders of magnitude for the Norit PAC, but only one logarithmic order of magnitude for Pellet II. Overall, our result suggested that increasing the secondary micropore and mesopore to a certain extent could shift the mechanism of competition from pore blockage to direct competition.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD