Abstract

Benzothiazoles, such as benzothiazole (BT), 2-hydroxybenzothiazole (OHBT), and 2-methylbenzothiazole (MeBT) are toxic and poorly biodegradable organic compounds, frequently present in wastewater from rubber related applications. Activated carbon adsorption has been identified as an attractive treatment to removing those contaminants. This paper presents experimental results on the effect of chemical surface properties of activated carbon on the adsorption mechanism of benzothiazoles. Activated carbons with different surface chemical composition were prepared from a Filtrasorb-400 activated carbon. Pre-treatment of activated carbon included de-oxygenation and ozonation with different ozone doses. Experimental results showed that high surface concentration of oxygenated electron withdrawing groups produced a significant reduction on carbon adsorption capacity of benzothiazoles. The results suggest that adsorption mechanism of benzothiazoles would mainly take place by ?-?dispersion interactions between the ? -electrons of aromatic ring of benzothiazole molecules and the ?-electrons of carbon graphene layers. When pH was higher than point of zero charge (pHPZC) of the activated carbon, repulsive electrostatic interactions appeared between adsorbate and ionised oxygenated surface groups, lowering the carbon adsorption capacity of benzothiazoles.