Development of a fluidized bed system for adsorption of phenol from aqueous solutions with commercial macroporous resins

this work is related to removal of phenol from wastewaters by adsorption onto polymeric resins, a current alternative to activated carbon. a closed circuit, bench-scale liquid fluidized bed system was developed for this purpose. phenol aqueous solutions with initial concentrations in the range of 0.084 to 0.451 kg/m3 were used to fluidize small permeable capsules of stainless steel screen containing a commercial resin at 308 k. experiments were carried out using a fluidizing velocity 20% above that of the minimum fluidization of the capsules. typically, 30 passages of the liquid volume circulating through the bed were required to reach a quasi-equilibrium concentration of phenol in the treated effluent. a simple batch adsorption model using the freundlich isotherm successfully predicted final phenol concentrations. suspended solids, often present in residual waters and a common cause of fixed bed clogging, were simulated with wood sawdust.