Removing aquatic organic substances by anion exchange resin and activated carbon

The purpose of this study was to compare the adsorption characteristics of trace organic substances (TOC) from a drinking water supply between synthetic resin and granular activated carbon (GAC). In batch experiments, the effect of dosage and pH showed that the resin is much better than GAG, and a lower temperature favors an increased capacity of resin and GAG. A comparison of four adsorption models showed that the order of square of correlation coefficient for each model on resin and GAC was the same and the order was linear, Freundlich, Langmuir, and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) from high to low. In the single-column study, resin had 1.6-6.0 times the breakthrough time of GAC and the breakthrough volumes of resin were 1.5-5.8 times that of GAG. The four serial columns study showed that the adsorption capacity for TOC by resin was 1.40 g/L and approximately up to 15 times greater than by GAG. The service time of resin was higher than that of GAC by a factor of 6-22, and the treated volumes were also 4-13 times that of GAC's. The resin was more effective than GAC after a proper selection in a traced TOC removal. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd.