Dynamic post-treatment response of olive mill effluent wastewater using activated carbon

Olive mill eflluent (OME) wastewater represents a serious environmental problem in the Mediterranean area. It has extremely high values of COD, BOD, and phenolic content. A new approach of treatment steps composed of settling, centrifugation, and filtration is suggested to be used to condition OME wastewater. The filtrate is then subjected to a post-treatment process, namely adsorption on activated carbon. The dynamic response of phenols concentration, pH, and COD, using different concentrations of activated carbon, shows a peak at which maximum adsorption capacity is achieved. The maximum adsorption capacity for the tested concentrations of activated carbon is reached in less than 4 h. The maximum removal of phenols is about 94%, while it reaches about 83% for organic matter.