Author(s)

Tanimola Hamed¹, Owolabi John², Awoyemi Emmanuel³, Kayode Benjamin⁴

¹Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria.
²Waste Water and Environmental Engineering, University of Greenwich, London, UK.
³Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomosho, Nigeria.
⁴Mega Sustainable Integrated Resources Limited, Lagos, Nigeria.

It is true that the world we have today is not the world we use to know. The Covid-19 pandemic has paralyzed all sector, hence the need for safety and enabling environment for mankind is of high importance. Adsorption technology is far the best and cheapest treatment technology for water and has extensively proven its worth for the uptake of micro-pollutant from surface, ground and water which are the major channels of home water. Over the years activated carbon is considered as the most common and universally used adsorbent for the eradication of different types of micro-pollutants from water. The contamination of surface water by micro-pollutant is a potential threat for the production of high quality and safe drinking water. Adsorption operation onto granulated activated carbon (GAC) in fixed-bed filters is often applied as a remedying step in the synthesis of safe and drinkable water. Activated carbon actively tends to act as a carrier material for a thin usually resistant layer of microorganisms (mostly bacteria) that forms on the coat of various surfaces (biofilm), hence biological simplification can be an alternative removal approach that can be adopted in granulated activated carbon filters. To evaluate the capacity of biofilm to biologically simplify micro-pollutants, it is very imperative to distinguish adsorption from biological simplification (biodegradation) as a removal mechanism. Experiment was carried out under the operating condition of a temperature range of 6?C to 20?C with biologically activated and autoclaved GAC to assess the biological simplification by the biofilm adsorbed on the GAC surface. Five micro-pollutants were selected as model compounds, of which some of them were biologically simplified by the GAC biofilm. Additionally, we observed that temperature can increase or decrease adsorption. Conclusively, comparison was made on the adsorption capacity of granulated activated carbon used for more than 50,000 beds.

Green Technology, Micro-Pollutants Removal, Adsorption through Activated Carbon, Water Treatment, Biodegradation and Biological Means, Temperature Effect

Hamed, T. , John, O. , Emmanuel, A. and Benjamin, K. (2020) Application of Green Technology Using Biological Means for the Adsorption of Micro-Pollutants in Water. Journal of Environmental Protection, 11, 735-752. doi: 10.4236/jep.2020.119045.