SIMULATING THE EFFECT OF ADSORPTION PARAMETERS ON DECONTAMINATION IN A BULLY STIRRED REACTOR SYSTEM - MASS-BALANCE APPROACH

Studies of contaminant transport in a reactor using the classical disp ersion equation (CDE) often simplified or neglected the reaction of th e contaminant with the stationary phase. This study was an effort to s imulate reactive contaminant transport in saturated and fully stirred reactor system, in which dispersion is negligible, using a model devel oped on the basis of mass balance with fixed flux, and to investigate the effect of solute adsorption parameters on the breakthrough curve ( BTC) and on solute accumulative in the output effluent. The Freundlich adsorption isotherm [Gamma(t)=wkC(t)(b), where, Gamma(t) is solute ad sorption per unit of volume of the media during time t (for complete a bbreviations and units, please see appendix), C-t is the mean concentr ation of the solute in the output effluent corresponding to time t, an d k and b (0<b less than or equal to l) are coefficients] was incorpor ated into the model. It was shown that as the value of b or k increase d, the rate at which C-t of the output effluent approached the maximum value declined. The calculated solute accumulation in the output effl uent varied inversely with values of b while the reverse was true with the values of F. This resulted from greater amount of contaminant ret ention by the media of higher adsorption capacity. The output of the s imulation suggests that quality of the output effluent of a wastewater treatment facility can be accurately related to flux, characteristics of the media and the wastewater being treated. The model was develope d using b values of 0, 0.5, and 1, as any b value can be changed to 0, 0.5 or 1 after transformation of the adsorption isotherms. The model may not be suitable for describing contaminant transport in unsaturate d and not stirred reactor, or in cases where the solute dispersion eff ect can not be neglected.