Abstract

An irrigation process through volcanic soil columns was evaluated for bleached Kraft mill effluent pollutants retention. The system was designed to remove color and phenolic compounds and a simple kinetic model for determining the global mass transfer coefficient and the adsorption rate constant was used. The results clearly indicate that the global mass transfer coefficient values (Kc a) and the adsorption rate constants are higher for the irrigation processes onto acidified soil. This means that the pretreatment of washing the volcanic soil with an acid solution has a positive effect on the adsorption rate for both pollutant groups. The enhanced adsorption capacity is partially explained by the activation of the metal oxides present in the soil matrix during the acid washing process. Increasing the flow rate from 1.5 to 2.5 ml/min yielded higher (Kc a) values and adsorption rate constants for both pollutant groups. For instance, regarding color adsorption onto acidified soil, there is an increment of 43% in the (Kc a) value for the experiment with a flow rate of 2.5 ml/min. Increasing the porosity of the column from 0.55 to 0.59, yielded a decrease in the (Kc a) values for color and phenolic compounds adsorption processes. Onto natural soil for example, these decreases reached 21% and 24%, respectively. Therefore, the (Kc a) value is dependent on both the liquid-phase velocity (external resistance) and the soil fraction in the column (internal resistance); making forced convection and diffusion to be the main transport mechanisms involved in the adsorption process. Analyzing the adsorption rate constants (Kc a)/m, phenolic compounds and color adsorption rates onto acidified soil of 2.25 × 10-6 and 2.62 × 10-6 l/mg min were achieved for experiment 1. These adsorption rates are comparable with other adsorption systems and adsorbent materials. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.