Adsorption process

Adsorption process is one of the method that have been used in our industry in order to remove
contaminated water such as mercuy. There are two types of adsorption process which is
physical adsorption and chemical adsorption. Physical adsorption can be form by a weak
interactions with the surface such as Van der Waals forces. Meanwhile, chemical adsorption
can form the chemical bond with the surface. There are four steps occurred during the process.
First step :
Mass transfer of the adsorbate molecules across the external boundary layer towards the solid
particles.
Second step :
Adsorbate molecules transport from the particle surface into the active sites by diffusion.
Third step :
Adsorption occurred.
Fourth step :
Once the molecules adsorbed, it will migrate on the pore surface through diffusion.

All this steps that occurred during the adsorption process can be apply to the wastewater
treatment in industry. However, this process must be react with activated carbon. This activated
carbon mostly have been used in most industry in order to purify the liquids and gases also. It
is produced from carbonaceous source materials such as coal, coconut shell and wood. It can
be found in granular activated carbon(GAC) and powdered activated carbon(PAC). Granular
activated carbon is normally used in open or closed systems. The impregnated activated carbon
also used in our industry. The best reaction for this impregnated activated carbon is,
Furthermore, there are some systematic factors affecting rates of adsorption process. In general,
the [H+] or [H3O+] affects adsorptive processes through dissociation of functional groups on
the adsorbate and adsorbent. The rate of adsorption at neutral pH values is not affected
adversely with where water treatment is operated. Moreover, adsorption is a kinetic process,
increasing or decreasing the system’s temperature could increases or decreases the rate of
removal. The well known Arrhenius equation can be used to describe this effects of temperature
on the reaction rate. By raising the temperature, it will increases the removal rate of of
contaminated water respectively. Meanwhile, initial adsorbate concentration can influenced the
rate of adsorption. Raising the concentration values caused an increase in the removal rate but
it did not effect the time required for removal. Concentration dependence of the rate of
adsorption is used to define the rate limiting step in the reaction. The size of diffusing molecules
should affect the overall rate of adsorption. Diffusion of adsorbate molecules in GAC structure
is the rate determining step in the adsorptive process. The larger the molecules, the slower
should be the rate at which it diffuses and also the rate of adsorption. Besides, the longer the
chain of hydrocarbons, the larger the molecular weight, therefore the slower the rate of
adsorption.
Thus, several characteristics of adsorbent, adsobates and solution phase are importants in the
determination of the rate limiting step. These include particles size of the adsorbents,
concentration of adsorbate and molecular size.