Xylene Removal From Dilute Solution By Palm Kernel Activated Charcoal: Kinetics and Equilibrium Analysis

Xylene is an aromatic hydrocarbon and a highly toxic compound. therefore, it is essential to remove this component from wastewater before discharging it into the environment. in this research, palm kernel biomass was activated chemically by h3po4 and the resulting synthesized activated charcoal was applied to separate xylene from aqueous media. the prepared activated charcoal was characterized using ftir, bet, sem, phzpc measurement, and boehm analysis methods. the characterization tests indicated that the produced activated carbon had an acidic character with various functional groups and a micropores structure. the values of the external mass transfer coefficients ranged from 1.87×10^-5 to 1.90×10^-5. by increasing the temperature, the pore and surface diffusion coefficients increased from 1.15×10^-9 to 1.91×10^-9 and 6.98×10^-16 to 7.58×10^-16, respectively. the sensitivity analysis indicated that pore diffusion and film diffusion were the main mass transfer parameters. the equilibrium analysis also revealed that the multilayer model with saturation could well describe the data. the number of adsorbate ions for one site, the number of adsorption layers, the density of the receptor site, and the energy of the adsorption at layers were determined using statistical physics modelling. the maximum capacity of the prepared activated charcoal at the experimental condition for xylene adsorption was 23.48 mg/g .