Abstract:
The removal of organic matter and phenol compound was carried out usingsequencing batch reactor applied with granular activated carbon (GAC-SBR system). Theexperiments were conducted by using synthetic wastewater contained 3,380 mg/l organicmatter in term of COD and 1,000 mg/l phenol. The study was going toward 2 parts : first,varying the concentration of granular activated carbon at 500, 1,000, 1,500, 2,000, and 2,500mg/l to investigate the optimum treatment efficiency and second, determining hydraulicretention time (HRT) on performance of the system at 3, 5, and 10 days. In each experimentwas run together with control (SBR system without GAC). In addition, the adsorptioncapacities of granular activated carbon was determined both in the standard test andSBR system.The results show the adsorption capacity of granular activated carbon in SBRsystem was higher than that in standard condition. The phenol and COD adsorption capacitiesof granular activated carbon in SBR system were 240 and 761 mg/gGAC, respectively ; whilethe phenol and COD adsorption capacities of granular activated carbon in standard conditionwere 213.26 and 685.61 mg/gGAC, respectively. The adsorption capacity of granular activatedcarbon was highest at the first day of treatment and decreased to 0 % at the third day.The optimum amount of granular activated carbon applied into SBR system was 1,000 mg/l.The COD and phenol contents of effluent in this system were 16 and 0.2 mg/l, respectively ;while COD and phenol contents of effluent in SBR system (control) were 122 and 3.1 mg/l,respectively. The removal efficiency of SBR system was improved when granular activatedcarbon was added. The determination of effect of HRT was studied at 1, 3, 5 and 10 days.At 1 day HRT, the concentrations of COD and phenol in effluent were 16 and 0.2 mg/lrespectively. When HRT valua was increased up to 3, 5 and 10 days ; it was found that CODcontent of effluent were 16, L4.5 and 8 mg/l and phenol content of effluent were 0.08, 0.023and 0.014 mg/l, respectively. In case of the control system at 1 day HRT, COD and phenolcontents of effluent were 122 and 3.4 mg/l, respectively. When the HRT value of thesystem was increased up to 3, 5 and 10 days, COD content of effluent were 48, 32 and16 mg/l and phenol content of effluent were 0.35, 0.18 and 0.018 mg/l, respectively. Theseresults indicated that the granular activated carbon had more advantages in shorten HRT andincreasing removal efficiency of organic matters in the system.