Lima L., Silva M., Vieira M., 2017, Fluid-dynamic Study of Benzene Adsorption from Liquid Phase by Commercial Organoclay, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 57, 589-594.
The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of operating flow rate in fixed bed adsorption of benzene, present in low concentration in aqueous solution, on particles of commercial organoclay. The fixed bed has 6.5 cm in height and 0.65 cm in internal diameter and was filled with about 2.0 g of adsorbent. The average diameter of organoclay particles was of 0.655 mm and the adsorption equilibrium and breakthrough curves were determined at flow rates of 5, 10 and 20 mL.min-1. The experiments were performed at room temperature (25 oC) and the initial concentration of benzene in liquid phase was 1.2 mmol.L-1. The adsorption efficiency and mass transfer parameters (total amount of sorbate removed, useful amount removed until the rupture point, height of mass transfer zone and total removal percentage) were used in order to evaluate the removal of hydrocarbon from water in the experiments. The higher removal of 1.431 mmol.g-1 was obtained with the highest flow rate of 20 mL.min-1. The model developed by Yan, Thomas and Clark reproduced adequately all the breakthrough curves and the experimental data. In this work we concluded that the organoclay has higher adsorption capacity than other alternative materials for adsorption of organic compounds.
