application of pervaporation and adsorption to the phenol removal from wastewater

Separation and Purification Technology 40 (2004) 123–132

Application of pervaporation and adsorption to thephenol removal from wastewater

Wojciech Kujawskia,∗, Andrzej Warszawskia, Włodzimierz Ratajczakb,Tadeusz Por¸ebskib, Wiesław Capałab, Izabela Ostrowskab

a Nicolaus Copernicus University, Faculty of Chemistry, ul. Gagarina 7, 87-100 Torun, Polandb Industrial Chemistry Research Institute, ul. Rydygiera 8, 01-793 Warszawa, Poland

Received in revised form 21 January 2004; accepted 30 January 2004

Abstract

Application of pervaporation and adsorption to the removal of phenol from solutions modeling wastewater from phenol production withcumene oxidation process was investigated. The transport and separation properties of composite membranes PEBA, PERVAP 1060 andPERVAP 1070 in pervaporation of water–acetone, water–phenol and water–phenol–acetone mixtures were determined. It was found that allmembranes were selective toward phenol. The PEBA membrane showed the best selectivity. However, this membrane is not actually availableon the commercial scale. Thus, in the practical applications PERVAP-1060 and PERVAP-1070 could be used. Adsorption of phenol on thedifferent Amberlite resins was also investigated. Among the Amberlite resins of various grades used, the Amberlite XAD-4 had the bestproperties in decontamination of aqueous phenol solutions. It was shown that regeneration of the adsorbent bed could be effectively performedwith sodium hydroxide solution.© 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Phenol; Wastewater treatment; Pervaporation; Adsorption; Hybrid processes

1. Introduction

Phenol is an important raw material in many branchesof industry (e.g. petrochemical, pharmaceutical, plastic andpesticidal chemical industry). Nowadays, the importance ofphenol is proved by its ever increasing global productioncapacity which reached 7.8 million of tonnes in 2001[1].

Since 1952, the cumene oxidation process, called alsothe Kellong, Brown and Root (KBR) phenol process, is acommonly used technology for the manufacture of phenoland acetone[2,3]. This process consists in oxidation of iso-propyl benzene (cumene) with air, followed by cleavage ofthe formed cumene hydroperoxide in the presence of an acidcatalyst. However, the cumene oxidation process is also asource of wastewater. Depending on the process conditionsup to 0.6 t of liquid wastes is generated per tonne of the phe-nol produced. The wastewater contains 2–3% phenol, 3–6%acetone, up to 0.1% aromatic hydrocarbons (mainly cumene

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.:+48-56-611-43-15;fax: +48-56-654-24-77.

E-mail address: [email protected] (W. Kujawski).

and �-methylstyrene) and 2–3% sodium salts (mainly for-mate and sulphate). Taking into account the high toxicityand hazardous character of phenol, the importance of de-contamination of these effluents before their discharge intosewage system and the environment, is obvious.

The conventional treatment of the cumene oxidation pro-cess effluents is presented schematically inFig. 1. Generallyit consists of two operation steps: (1) distillation of acetoneand hydrocarbons from raw wastes and (2) phenol adsorp-tion on polymeric resins or phenol extraction with organicsolvent. However, the presently used solution exhibits someessential disadvantages: (1) distillation is an energy consum-ing technique, (2) high phenol content in liquors directed tothe adsorption step involves either a frequent regeneration ofthe adsorbent bed or the demand of its high capacity, (3) theuse of combustible acetone as regenerant of the adsorbent.

Therefore, the present work aimed at developing analternative hybrid process (distillation–pervaporation–adsorption) for the treatment of effluents from the cumeneoxidation process. Pervaporation is an energy saving mem-brane technique used to separate liquid mixtures[4]. Thistechnique would allow removal of a considerable part of

1383-5866/$ – see front matter © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.seppur.2004.01.013

124 W. Kujawski et al. / Separation and Purification Technology 40 (2004) 123–132

Nomenclature

List of symbolsBV volume of resin bedc concentration [g dm−3]Ji permeate flux of speciesi [g m−2 h−1]k, n coefficients of the Freundlich equationq adsorption capacity [g dm−3]

Greek lettersα separation factorβ enrichment factor

the organic pollutants, whereas adsorption, the classicalseparation technique, would lower the phenol concentrationof the treated effluent to the level acceptable by wastewatertreatment plant. In the present paper, we describe the resultsof our studies on the pervaporative removal of phenol usingdifferent hydrophobic membranes and followed by phenoladsorption on polymeric resins.

2. Experimental

2.1. Pervaporation experiments

Pervaporation experiments were carried out in thelaboratory-scale pervaporation system presented inFig. 2[5]. System was composed of a temperature controlled feedvessel, circulating pump, membrane test cell, cold fingersand vacuum pump. Feed solution was pump to a membranetest cell with a membrane area equal to 170 cm2. The perva-poration system was operated at 333 K (water–phenol mix-ture) and at 313 K (water–acetone, water–acetone–phenolmixtures). During experiments the upstream pressure wasmaintained at the atmospheric pressure, while the down-stream pressure was kept below 1 mbar by using a vacuumpump. Permeate was collected into cold fingers cooled byliquid nitrogen. To avoid phenol condensation before the

Fig. 1. Scheme of the cumene process wastewaters treatment.

Fig. 2. Scheme of the laboratory scale pervaporation setup.

cold traps, the permeation part of the pervaporation systemwas heated to 333 K. Permeation fluxes were determined byweighing permeate collected over a given period of time inthe cold fingers. Composition of both the feed and perme-ate mixtures was determined by using gas chromatography.VARIAN 3300 gas chromatograph equipped with PORA-PAC Q packed column and a thermal conductivity detector(TCD) was used. JMBS BORWIN Software (Le Fontanil,France) was used to the data acquisition and processing.Samples were injected by the direct on-column injectiontechnique. Each sample was analyzed three times.

Performance properties of a given pervaporation mem-brane were defined by the separation factor� (Eq. (1)) andpermeate fluxesJ [4].

αorg/water =(corg/cwater)permeate

(corg/cwater)feed(1)

wherecorg andcwater denote the weight fraction of organicand water component, respectively.

The experiments were carried out using composite mem-branes PERVAP-1060, PERVAP-1070 (Sulzer ChemtechMembrane Systems A.G., Neunkirchen, Germany) andPEBA (GKSS-Forschungszentrum Geesthacht GmbH,Geesthacht, Germany). Characteristics of the investigatedmembranes are listed inTable 1, and the compositionof investigated water–organic mixtures is presented inTable 2.

W. Kujawski et al. / Separation and Purification Technology 40 (2004) 123–132 125

Table 1Characteristics of the investigated membranes, according to the manufacturers’ data

Membrane Thickness of theselective layer (�m)

Composition of the selective layer

PERVAP-1060 8 PDMSa

PERVAP-1070 10 Zeoliteb filled PDMS

PEBA 80 PEBAc

a PDMS–poly(dimethylsiloxane).b Zeolite ZSM-5: Nan[Al nSi(96−n)O192] ∼ 16 H2O, n < 27.c Block copolymer polyether–polyamide (PE–PA).

Table 2The composition of feed solutions

Mixture Content of the organiccomponent (wt.%)

Temperature(K)

Water–acetone 0–8 313Water–phenol 0–7 333water–acetone–phenol 0–8 313

2.2. Adsorption experiments

The Amberlite resins, XAD-4, XAD-7 and XAD-16, man-ufactured by Rohm and Hass Co. were applied in adsorptionexperiments. The properties of the adsorbents are presentedin Table 3. Prior to use, all the adsorbent samples were stan-dardized using the following procedure: the dry resin sample(100 cm3) was placed in a column and the adsorbent bed wasrinsed using distilled water (500 cm3), acetone (200 cm3)and distilled water (1000 cm3) with the volumetric flow rate200 cm3 h−1.

Adsorption experiments under static conditions usingthree Amberlite resins were carried out by the batch method[6]. The samples of an adsorbent (0.6–25 g) were shakenwith 100 cm3 of aqueous phenol solution (10 g dm−3).When adsorption reached equilibrium, phenol concentra-tion in solution was determined. The amount of phenol inadsorbent was calculated from concentrations of solution

Table 3Characteristics of the Amberlite resins

Copolymerisate

XAD-4 styrene–divinylbenzene XAD-7 acrylate–divinylbenzene XAD-16 styrene–divinylbenzene

Specific surface area [m2 g−1] 750 450 750Porosity [cm3 cm−3] 0.65–0.70 0.55 0.58–0.63Bulk density [g cm−3] 0.62–0.63 0.62 0.61Particle size [mm] 0.3–1.2 0.3–1.2 0.3–1.2

before and after adsorption.The column method[6] was applied to determine ad-

sorption properties under dynamic conditions using theAmberlite XAD-4 resin. The model feed solutions con-taining different amounts of phenol (i.e. 3 and 5 g dm−3)and sodium sulphate (30 g dm−3) were controlled to passthrough the resin bed with volumetric feed rate of 2 BV h−1.The symbol BV denotes the volume of resin bed. Aftera breakthrough of the column the model solution was re-moved and resin was regenerated (proportioning rate of aregenerant was 1 BV h−1). The following liquid mixtureswere used as regenerants: water, sodium sulphate solution(30 g dm−3), treated model solution (phenol concentration:0.08 g dm−3) and sodium hydroxide solution (200 g dm−3).

Phenol content in the investigated mixtures was deter-mined by spectrophotometric analysis[7].

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Pervaporation

The pervaporation results for water–phenol, water–ace-tone and water–phenol–acetone mixtures were shown inFigs. 3–12.


Fig. 3. Separation diagram of hydrophobic membranes investigated incontact with binary water–acetone mixtures (T = 313 K, permeate pres-sure<1 mbar).

All investigated hydrophobic membranes were selectivetoward the organic component of the mixture, however, theselectivity was dependent on both the polarity of organiccomponent and the kind of the membranes used for theseparation.

In case of water–acetone mixture (Fig. 3) the best sepa-ration properties were found for PERVAP-1070 membrane,i.e. the PDMS membrane with zeolite filling, whereas thePEBA membrane exhibited the lowest selectivity. During thetreatment of wastewater from the cumene oxidation process,acetone is removed by distillation and its content is usuallylow (Fig. 1). The content of acetone could be further dimin-ished by pervaporation.

Fig. 4. Separation diagram of hydrophobic membranes investigated incontact with binary water–phenol mixtures (T = 333 K, permeate pressure<1 mbar).

Fig. 5. Enrichmentβ factor of hydrophobic membranes investigated incontact with binary water–phenol mixtures (T = 333 K, permeate pressure<1 mbar).

In contact with aqueous phenol solutions, the PEBA mem-brane, made of poly(ether block amide) polymer, showed thehighest selectivity. Both PDMS membranes were less selec-tive (Figs. 4 and 5). The high selectivity of PEBA membranesin contact with water–phenol mixtures have been alreadyreported by Kondo et al.[8] and Boeddeker et al.[9]. Theenrichment factorβ (i.e. a ratio of mass fractions of the com-ponent preferentially transported in permeate and in feed,respectively)[4] found for the PEBA membrane (Fig. 5) wasin the same range as found by Boeddeker et al.[9].

It is worth noting that for both the binary systems inves-tigated, the zeolite filling of PERVAP-1070 membrane im-proved the membrane selectivity (Figs. 3–5).

Fig. 6. Separation diagram of hydrophobic membranes investigated incontact with ternary water–phenol–acetone mixtures (T = 313 K, permeatepressure<1 mbar).


Fig. 7. Permeate phenol flux through hydrophobic membranes investigatedin contact with binary water–phenol mixtures (T = 333 K, permeatepressure<1 mbar).

The selectivity of investigated membranes in contact withwater–phenol–acetone ternary mixture (Fig. 6) showed thesimilar trends as for water–phenol binary mixture (Fig. 4).The selectivity of membrane in contact with a ternary mix-ture is usually lower than that in contact with a binary one[10]. This is caused by the additional plasticization effect ex-erted by the other organic component on the polymeric ma-trix, resulting in the increase of the water diffusion throughthe membrane. The separation coefficientsα (Eq. (1)) pre-sented inTable 4indicated that selectivity of the investigatedmembranes decreased with increase of the phenol contentin the feed[7,8].

The transport properties of the investigated membranesin contact with water–acetone, water–phenol and water–phenol–acetone mixtures were presented inFigs. 7–12.

Fig. 8. Permeate water flux through hydrophobic membranes investigatedin contact with binary water–phenol mixtures (T = 333 K, permeatepressure<1 mbar).

Fig. 9. Permeate phenol flux through hydrophobic membranes investi-gated in contact with ternary water–phenol–acetone mixtures (T = 313 K,permeate pressure<1 mbar).

The permeate flux of the organic component (i.e. phenoland/or acetone) through the membranes was linearly de-pendent on the feed composition (Figs. 7,9 and 11). Thehighest flux of phenol through the PEBA membrane incontact with 2 wt.% phenol solution was 150 g m−2 h−1

(Fig. 9). The permeate flux of water was also substan-tial (around 200 g m−2 h−1 for PEBA and PERVAP-1070membranes and 600–800 g m−2 h−1 for the PERVAP-1060membrane) but practically independent on the feed com-position (Figs. 8,10 and 12). The detailed comparisonof fluxes of water and organics molecules through bothPERVAP-1060 (i.e. PDMS membrane) and PERVAP-1070(i.e. zeolite filled PDMS membrane) allowed the expla-

Fig. 10. Permeate water flux through hydrophobic membranes investi-gated in contact with ternary water–phenol–acetone mixtures (T = 313 K,permeate pressure<1 mbar).


Fig. 11. Permeate acetone flux through PDMS (PERVAP-1060) and zeolitefilled PDMS (PERVAP-1070) hydrophobic membranes in contact withbinary water–acetone mixtures (T = 313 K, permeate pressure<1 mbar).

Fig. 12. Permeate water flux through PDMS (PERVAP-1060) and zeolitefilled PDMS (PERVAP-1070) hydrophobic membranes in contact withbinary water–acetone mixtures (T = 313 K, permeate pressure<1 mbar).

nation of the role of zeolite filling in the separation ofwater–acetone and water–phenol mixtures (Figs. 7,8,11and 12). It can be seen that for both the mixtures the se-lectivity of the PERVAP-1070 membrane exceeded that

Table 4Selectivity of hydrophobic membranes in contact with binary and ternary water–organics systems

Feed composition(wt.% phenol)

PEBAX 4033 PERVAP 1070 PERVAP 1060

�a H2O/PhOH/Ac �b H2O/PhOH �a H2O/PhOH/Ac �b H2O/PhOH �a H2O/PhOH/Ac �b H2O/PhOH

1 33.0 42.4 5.5 14.0 1.4 4.12 22.0 41.7 5.1 13.6 1.4 3.94 13.5 39.0 4.5 12.3 1.3 3.5

PhOH: phenol, Ac: acetone.a Water–phenol–acetone system,T = 313 K.b Water–phenol system,T = 333 K.

Fig. 13. Phenol content in retentate vs. duration of batch pervaporationprocess with hydrophobic membranes investigated (V/S = 2.5).

of the PERVAP-1060 one. In general, a decrease of waterflux would be expected due to the increase in the diffu-sion pathway in the polymer matrix in the presence of thehydrophobic zeolite particles. On the other hand, the fluxof organic component can increase or decrease, dependingon the balance between the loss in flux due to the increaseof a tortuosity pathway and augmentation of organic com-pound sorption in the zeolite particles[5]. In the case ofwater–acetone, zeolite fillings caused the decrease of bothwater and acetone fluxes (Figs. 11 and 12), but the loweringof water flux was more pronounced. On the other hand, inthe case of water–phenol mixture, zeolite fillings causedthe substantial decrease of the water flux only (Fig. 8),whereas the flux of phenol remained practically unaltered(Fig. 7).

There are several papers dealing with the feasibility ofpervaporation process to recover phenol from wastewater[8,11–13]. Usually, pervaporation was combined with an-other technique (both the classical or membrane one) intoa hybrid process. The most work was done with the sys-tems with phenol content in the feed in the range of hun-dred parts per million. One must remember, however, thatthe concentration polarization effects are very strong at thisconcentration region, which results in the decreasing of the


Table 5Efficiency of the phenol removal from wastewater, by using batch pervaporation with different hydrophobic membranes

Membrane Time of pervaporation (h) Retentate Permeate

Fraction of feed Phenol content (wt.%) Fraction of feed Phenol content (wt.%)

PERVAP-1070 27 0.80 0.18 0.20 14.0PERVAP-1060 18 0.43 0.17 0.57 5.1PEBA 8 0.92 0.17 0.08 35.2

V/S: 25 kg m−2, T: 333 K, feed: 3 wt.% of phenol.

efficiency of the process. Application of adsorption wouldbe much more efficient in this concentration range.

The results obtained on the transport and selective prop-erties of membranes investigated in this work were appliedto the estimation of the efficiency of pervaporation in theremoval of phenol from wastewater. Assuming that the feedconcentration of phenol was equal to 30 g dm−3 (Fig. 1), weestimated, for each membrane, the time needed to lower thecontent of phenol in retentate, down to 2 g dm−3 (Fig. 13).Additionally, the amount and composition of permeate werealso calculated (Table 5). Calculations were made for thebatch pervaporation and the feed to the membrane area ratio(V/S) equal to 25 kg m−2.

Present results proved the high efficiency of the PEBAmembrane in the recovery of phenol. The pervaporation unitwith the PEBA membrane would need about 8 h to decreasethe phenol level in the retentate down to 2 g dm−3. Moreover,permeate was only 8% of the beginning amount of the feedmixture, with the average content of phenol equal to 35 wt.%.Thus, the phenol content in the treated wastes would be di-minished about 15 times. Calculations made for the bothPDMS membranes (i.e. PERVAP-1060 and PERVAP-1070)showed that time needed for the wastewater treatment wouldbe longer (Table 5). It is also worth mentioning that timeneeded to reach a given dephenolization degree, can be al-tered by changing the temperature of the system and bychanging theV/S ratio (Fig. 14) [10].

More results on the optimization of the pervaporation pro-cess for the phenol recovery from wastewater, based on per-vaporation experiments in a larger scale, have been recentlyperformed in our laboratory[14].

3.2. Adsorption

3.2.1. Equilibrium adsorptionSorption isotherms of phenol on the Amberlite resins

(XAD series) plotted inFig. 15 enabled the compari-son of properties of various adsorbents and the choiceof the most efficient one. The Amberlite XAD-4 andXAD-16 resins made of styrene–divinylbenzene copolymershowed higher affinity to phenol than the XAD-7 one withmethyl acrylate–divinylbenzene copolymer matrix. Thepoly(styrene–divinylbenzene) resins were known as efficientphenol adsorbent[15]. Amberlite XAD-4 was successivelyused for adsorption of various organic compounds[16,17],among them aromatic ones[18,19]. Our results confirmed

Fig. 14. Phenol content in retentate vs. duration of batch pervaporationprocess using PEBA membrane for differentV/S ratio.

also the earlier results obtained by Li et al. for sorption ofphenol traces by Amberlite XAD-4 (phenol concentrationbelow 1 g dm−3) [20,21]. Additional experiments, whichwere carried out for ternary solutions containing variousamounts of sodium sulphate (up to 50 g dm−3) indicatedthat phenol sorption on the Amberlite XAD-4 increasedwith the increase of Na2SO4 content in solution (Table 6).

Adsorption equilibria are usually described using variousequations. Among them the Freundlich and the Langmuirequations are the most frequently used[16,19–21]. In thecase of the investigated Amberlite resins the best fitting was

Fig. 15. Adsorption isotherms of phenol on the Amberlite resin of variousgrades. Experimental points were indicated, curves correspond to theFreundlich equation.


Table 6Coefficients of the Freundlich equation for the adsorption of phenol onthe Amberlite resin of various grades

adsorbent Na2SO4 content(g dm−3)

k n r

XAD-7 0 16.12 2.268 0.9920XAD-16 0 22.47 2.247 0.9999XAD-4 0 31.81 2.326 0.9981XAD-4 20 34.37 2.381 0.9997XAD-4 50 36.97 2.564 0.9994

obtained using the former one. The coefficientsk andn ofthe Freundlich equation:

q = kc1/n (2)

whereq is adsorption capacity (mass of phenol per unit vol-ume of adsorbent),c the equilibrium phenol concentration insolution, were listed inTable 6. In all cases, the Freundlichequation fitted well the experimental data (correlation coef-ficients r over 0.99). The coefficientk was usually consid-ered as a relative indicator of adsorption capacity. The con-cave shape of the isotherms and the coefficientn exceedingunity indicated favourable phenol adsorption[21].

Taking into account the results concerning equilibriumphenol adsorption on various grades of the Amberlite resin,further adsorption experiments under dynamic conditionswere carried out using Amberlite XAD-4 alone.

3.2.2. Adsorption under dynamic conditionsAdsorption under dynamic conditions was performed in

order to investigate properties of the chosen adsorbent Am-berlite XAD-4 during adsorption and regeneration steps. Thesolutions modelling partially dephenolized wastes containedphenol (3–5 g dm−3) and sodium sulphate (30 g dm−3). Fourkinds of incombustible liquors were used to regenerate theresin bed.

The breakthrough curve for the adsorption step made itpossible to estimate the volume of eluate up to breakthroughpoint (Vs), which corresponded to the volume of decontam-inated eluate. On the other hand, the regeneration (elution)curve indicated the volume of a regenerant (VR) at whichits concentration decreased to a desired low value. This vol-ume of regenerant was necessary to elute phenol out fromthe bed resin. The difference�V = Vs − VR was regardedas a measure of the efficiency of the regenerant used. Thehigher�V value, the more efficient the regenerant was.

The breakthrough and regeneration curves obtainedat 368 K (95◦C) using water, sodium sulfate solution(30 g dm−3) and treated model solution (with phenol con-centration of 0.08 g dm−3) were presented inFig. 16. Phe-nol concentration in the feed was equal to 5 g dm−3. It wasfound that the highest volume of the treated waste (�V

≈ 6 BV) was obtained, when the adsorbent bed was regen-erated with hot water. Sodium sulfate solution and treatedmodel solution were the less efficient regenerants (�Vapproximately equal to 4 and 1 BV, respectively).

Fig. 16. The breakthrough curve for adsorption and the regeneration(elution) curve. The Amberlite XAD-4 bed regenerated at 368 K usingwater, sodium sulphate solution and treated model solution. The dashedline indicates phenol concentration in the feed (5 g dm−3). The eluatevolume on the abscissa axis is expressed in the volume of resin bed (BV).

Fig. 17. The breakthrough curve for adsorption and the regeneration(elution) curve. The Amberlite XAD-4 bed regenerated at 333 K usingsodium hydroxide solution (200 g dm−3). The dashed line indicates phenolconcentration in the feed (3 g dm−3). The eluate volume on the abscissaaxis is expressed in the volume of resin bed (BV).

The regeneration step could be carried out efficientlywith hydroxide solution due to the chemical reaction be-tween phenol and hydroxide. The phenolate formed is notadsorbed on the resin and as the consequence the lowconcentration of phenol in solution changes the equilib-rium sorption–desorption enhancing desorption of phenolfrom the bed. It is seen fromFig. 17, that about 8 BVof the model waste solution (i.e. solution containing phe-nol at the concentration 3 g dm−3) could be purified inone adsorption-regeneration cycle. Moreover, it would bepossible to use sodium hydroxide solution (200 g dm−3)several times as an efficient regenerant, which could addi-tionally decrease the total volume of the concentrate. Thebreakthrough curves proved also that the repeated usage ofsodium hydroxide solution did not influence the efficiencyof the adsorption of phenol during the next adsorption steps(Fig. 17).

4. Conclusions

Pervaporation experiments proved that phenol couldbe effectively removed from the aqueous solutions usingthe appropriate organophilic membranes. All investigatedmembranes (i.e. PERVAP-1060, PERVAP-1070 and PEBA)


Fig. 18. The proposed hybrid pervaporation–adsorption process for treatment of wastewaters containing phenol. (A) General concept. (B) Pervaporationpart of the hybrid system[14].

showed interesting selective and transport properties incontact with binary and ternary water–organics mixtures.In general, the membrane selectivity was smaller in contactwith ternary mixture comparing to the binary one. Althoughthe poly(ether block amide) membrane (PEBA) possessedthe best separation properties in the removal of phenol, it isnot actually available on the commercial scale. Thus, in thepractical applications PERVAP-1060 and PERVAP-1070could be used[14]. Partial permeate fluxes of phenolthrough both PDMS membranes were practically the same.It means that the presence of zeolite filling of PERVAP-1070membrane did not influence the phenol transport. On theother hand, flux of water was much smaller through thePDMS membrane with the zeolite filling (PERVAP-1070)compared to the pure PDMS membrane (PERVAP-1060).The enhancement of transport in the presence of zeolitewas observed in the case of acetone transport.

The static adsorption experiments proved that the Fre-undlich equation described well the sorption phenomena inall systems. The best sorption properties were found in thecase of the Amberlite XAD-4. Using this adsorbent, madeof cross-linked styrene–divinylbenzene copolymer, the re-moval of phenol from model solution containing phenol(3–0 g dm−3) and sodium sulphate (30 g dm−3) was carriedout by the column method. Non-combustible liquors: dis-tilled water, sodium sulphate solution (30 g dm−3), eluateand sodium hydroxide solution (200 g dm−3) were used toregenerate the sorbent bed. The breakthrough curve and theregeneration (elution) curve were determined. It was foundthat the regeneration of the sorbent bed using NaOH solu-tion enables the most effective removal of phenol from lowconcentrated solution.

Pervaporation and adsorption results obtained withwater–phenol mixtures suggest that the hybrid system couldbe used to the efficient decontamination of the effluentsfrom the cumene oxidation process. The scheme of suchhybrid process was presented inFig. 18 [14].

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application of pervaporation and adsorption to the phenol removal from wastewater

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