Treatment of dyehouse effluents with a carbon-based adsorbent using anodic oxidation regeneration

Adsorption is an attractive route for the removal of coloured, toxic and non-biodegradable organics from wastewater as very low discharge standards can be achieved. This paper reports on the use of a novel carbon-based material, Nyex100, as an adsorbent material for the treatment of dyehouse effluent. The adsorbent has low porosity and high electrical conductivity and these factors have allowed the adsorbent to be electrochemically regenerated. This work has demonstrated that the adsorbent can be cycled through the process of adsorption and regeneration a number of times with little drop in adsorptive capacity. However regeneration appears to modify the preference for organic species adsorption. Electrochemical regeneration can be rapidly achieved (15-20 minutes) using low current densities (< 20 mA cm(-2)). However, the low adsorptive capacity of the adsorbent, because of its small surface area, means that large quantities of adsorbent would need to be cycled within the process to treat the effluent volume generated in even small dyehouses. Thus, it is believed that operating the process in this mode limits the practical application of this technology.