Abstract
Several adsorbents were tried to remove the selenium ions from industrial wastewater and the following ascending order of the adsorption performance for the selenium at pH 9 was observed: cation exchange resin < chelate resin < zeolite < brown marine algae < granular activated carbon < anion exchange resin. Initial concentration of selenium(146 mg/L) in industrial wastewater was reduced to 63 mg/L of selenium at pH 9 by neutralization process. The maximum uptake of Se calculated from the Langmuir isotherm with anion exchange resin was 0.091 mmol/g at pH 10 and that with granular activated carbon was 0.083 mmol/g at pH 6. The affinity coefficients of Se ion towards anion exchange resin and granular activated carbon were 3.263 L/mmol at pH 10 and 0.873 L/mmol at pH 6, respectively. The sorption performance of anion exchange resin at the low concentration of Se, namely, was much better than that of granular activated carbon. The Se ions from industrial wastewater throughout neutralization process and two steps of adsorption using anion exchange resin was removed to 97.7%.
