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African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 7 (21), pp. 3887-3891, 5 November, 2008 Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/AJB ISSN 1684–5315 © 2008 Academic Journals

Full Length Research Paper

COD removal from industrial wastewater using activated carbon prepared from animal horns
Emmanuel O. Aluyor and Olalekan A. M. Badmus
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria.
Accepted 14 August, 2008

The present study was undertaken to compare the adsorption efficiency of activated carbon prepared from animal horns (AHC), which is both a waste and a pollutant and a commercial activated carbon (CAC) with respect to uptake of the organic components responsible for the chemical oxygen demand (COD) of industrial wastewater. The adsorption process was examined in terms of its equilibria and its kinetics. The effect of pH, contact time and adsorbent dose were investigated. The most effective pH was found to be 5 for AHC and 6 for CAC. The equilibrium data for COD removal fitted the Linear, Langmuir and the Freundlich models. The mechanisms of the rate of adsorption of COD were analysed using the pseudo-second-order model. The model provided a very high degree of correlation of the experimental adsorption rate data suggesting that this model could be used in design applications. Key words: Adsorption, batch, kinetics, Langmuir, Freundlich, adsorbent. INTRODUCTION Pollution of water by organic and inorganic chemicals is of serious environmental concern. Industrial wastewater differs in characteristics from the domestic wastewater. Industrial wastewaters result from spills, leaks, and product washing and water resulting from cooling processes. The organic content of wastewater is traditionally measured using lumped parameters such as biological oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total suspended solids (TSS) and total organic carbon (TOC). These parameters as such do not show any chemical identity of organic