No abstract

Mucuna sloanei (MS) an environmentally friendly biomass was used as a coagulant for treatment of phosphorus containing waste water. The study evaluates the coag-flocculation efficiency of MS and its functional kinetic parameter response to varying pH and dosage of the waste water effluent. Coag-flocculation reaction order α, coag-flocculation rate constant K, and coagulation period τ 1/2 were determined. The maximum coag-flocculation performance (97.4%) is recorded at rate constant, K of 1.24 × 10 −4 l/mg·min, dosage of 400 mg/l, pH of 8 and coagulation period τ 1/2 of 0.100 min while the minimum (61%) is recorded at K of 3 × 10 −5 l/gm·min, dosage 100 mg/l, pH of 2 and τ 1/2 of 8.900 mins. The results confirm that MS coagulant is an effective coagulant obeying the theory of fast coagulation in the conditions of the experiments.

Excess deposits of phosphorus into surface waters have caused a lot of devastating effects on both human and aquatic lives and, of course, ecosystem disruption. Ox-eye seed (OES), an agricultural biomass, has been explored as a coagulant to remove phosphorus from aqueous solution through coag-flocculation process. The seeds were prepared into a coagulant and a proximate analysis was carried out on the prepared OES. Nephelometric analysis was employed to investigate the effects of settling time, coagulant dosage and pH on phosphate removal efficiency of OES. The process parameters were optimized using Response Surface Methodology. OES’s performance was compared with Alum’s, a conventional coagulant, and the results obtained reveal Alum as having a global minimum of zero turbidity, global optimum values for pH (7.4103) and dosage (301.6501mg/l) but a local optimum of 80min for settling time, while the optimum operating parameters for OES are 7.3740 (global), 500mg/l (local), 80min (local) and 11.2266mg/l (local) for pH, dosage, settling time and turbidity respectively. It is evident that, by increasing settling time and dosage , OES can effectively compete with Alum. The main attribute to effective performance of both OES and Alum is pH. The interactions pH-dosage and pH-settling time are significant. The model accuracy is confirmed by the values of R2 >0.99 and is validated by the closeness of the experimental data to the predictions. Keywords: Phosphorus, wastewater, turbidity, Coagulant, ox-eye, flocculation

This use of biomass-based adsorbent has been explored for the column study of the adsorptive dehydration of water in ethanol-water mixtures. The column study was carried out using enzyme modified corn starch and the breakthrough curve parameters were used to design the packed bed column. The effect of flow rate on the breakthrough curves revealed that adsorption efficiency decreased with increased inflow rate. The empty bed contact time ( ) of the pilot plant packed column was 35.35 min while the breakthrough time is 40.78 min. 66.7% was the fraction of capacity left unused for the pilot plant from the design.