Methyl tert-Butyl Ether (MTBE) is one of the common environmental contaminants that pose severe risks to human health and the environment. Due to the detrimental effects of MTBE, many efforts have been devoted towards decontamination of wastewater containing MTBE. Most of the reports on the treatment of MTBE are experimental based, which requires studying the effect of several factors such as dosage of the photocatalyst, pH of the medium, the initial concentration of contaminant and the contact time on degradation efficiency in MTBE contaminated waters. Although, this approach is highly dependable and often leads to new insights. However, because the degradation efficiency is influenced by multiple factors, performing experiments to investigate the effect of these factors often increases the experimental burden, thus requiring more time and materials consumption to achieve desirable results. Herein, we propose a computational intelligent strategy to mitigate these challenges. In this contribution, the degradation efficiencies of MTBE in the presence of TiO 2 /UV were modeled under various experimental conditions using the support vector regression model. The model was built using experimental data comprising of inputs such as TiO 2 dose, initial MTBE concentration, UV wavelength and contact time. Remarkably, the developed model exhibits significant accuracy as determined from the values of correlation coefficient (98.27%) and root means square error (5.53). In addition, it was determined that the achievable optimum conditions for degradation of 0.5-100 ppm MTBE-contaminated water were 2.4 g/L of TiO 2 dose with UV radiation, a solution pH of 3 and treatment time of 2 h. This study will be useful in the experimental design of treatment for MTBE, consequently reducing the time spent on running experiments and at the same time ensuring efficient use of resources for treatment of MTBE contaminated water.

In this study, sewage sludge-derived activated carbon (SDAC) was synthesized, characterized, and tested for its potential as an adsorbent of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE). The SDAC was produced by activating the sludge with zinc chloride and subsequently subjected to various ranges of pyrolytic temperatures. It was then characterized using SEM/EDX, BET, and TGA. The SEM-EDX analyses showed that impurities like Fe, Al, Mg, Mn, Ca, and Na of the raw sludge were removed by the higher pyrolytic temperature and acid-washing procedures. TGA showed the thermal stability of the produced material. Results of the BET revealed a significant increase in surface area of the sludge from 1.5 m/g to 385 m/g after acid washing. The MTBE removal efficiency of 70% was achieved after 60 min with 2 g/L of SDAC at pH 6, and initial MTBE concentration of 1 ppm. The adsorption kinetics of SDAC fitted into pseudo-second-order reactions. This work demonstrated a beneficial use of a bio-waste material (sewage sludge) in water treatment technologies.

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