Reactive adsorption of Safranin O: surface – pore diffusion modeling and degradation study

Abstract Granular activated carbon was doped with iron (Fe-AC) and was used to study the removal of Safranin O (SO) using the Fe-AC/H2O2 system for reactive adsorption and Fe-AC for adsorption. Fe-AC and H2O2 doses were optimized to obtain maximum removal of SO. Maximum removal was found to be 96.1% after 5 h using 1.0 g/L Fe-AC and 5.0 mM hydrogen peroxide doses for 10 mg/L initial SO concentration. Kinetic study suggested the suitability of the pseudo-first-order model for reactive adsorption. The Langmuir isotherm explained well the sorption of SO onto Fe-AC. Parallel-pore-reactive adsorption model was applied and validated. By fitting the experimental data to the model, it is observed that the surface reaction rate coefficient, kr, was found to be five times that of the apparent rate constant, kapp. Parameters such as the external liquid film mass transfer coefficient, macro-pore and micro-pore diffusivities were estimated by regression analysis. Pore diffusion and surface reaction were found to be rate controlling for adsorption and reactive adsorption, respectively. An oxidative degradation of SO took place via hydroxylation and ring cleavage processes.