Original Articles
Vishnuprasad and K. Senthil Ku
Abstract
In this research, the removal of pollution load from cooking oil mill effluent (sun flower oil, ground nut oil) was done using a naturally available biological adsorbent-crab shell chitosan of low molecular weight. The parameters which affect the pollutant load in the effluent are COD, TSS, TDS, TS and Turbidity. In these parameters, COD is having the major effect in the pollution load of the cooking oil mill effluent. Batch adsorption studies were done for the reduction of COD from the effluent by varying the chitosan dosage(2g-15g), pH (2-9), contact time (0.5hr-3hr), agitation speed (500rpm-1000rpm), adsorbent size (0.4mm-5mm). All the parameters were optimized graphically by conducting batch experimental runs. Studies on the kinetics of batch adsorption were done for the determination of equilibrium constants for predicting the best kinetic model among pseudo first order equation, pseudo second order equation, Elovich equation and fractional power model. Adsorption isotherms were also done for analyzing the process using equilibrium data to better understanding the system. Based on the experimental results, it was found that the maximum COD reduction of 86% were obtained using the crab shell chitosan as an adsorbent at optimized values of above parameters. From the research, it was found that the kinetics of adsorption in the reduction of COD was evidently fitting to pseudo first order kinetics.