Fundamentals of Adsorption Process onto Carbon, Integration with Biological Process for Treating Industrial Waste Water: Future Perspectives and Challenges

Presence of various types of micro-pollutants in domestic, industrial and municipal wastewater and landfill leachates are hazardous for living organisms. Thus, industries need to follow stringent requirements for discharging the chemicals in aquatic system. Organic pollutants, including dyes, hormones, phenols, pharmaceuticals, aromatic compounds, dyes, herbicides, pesticides, bromine containing retardants, industrial by-products, domestic products, sterilisers, and antiseptics, are referred as xenobiotic organic compounds (XOCs). Traditional treatment techniques used for organic pollutant removal is not sufficient. The porous carbonaceous structure of granular (GAC) and powdered (PAC) activate carbon can adsorb targeted pollutants from water. The surface area of activated carbon can be varied from (500–1500 m2g−1). The first part of the chapter illustrated the basic mechanism for adsorptive removal of contaminants over powdered and granular activated carbon (PAC or GAC). Now a days, adsorption onto activated carbon is integrated with biological process for treating industrial effluents. Adsorption integrated with biological treatment of waste water can be carried out using powdered activated carbon membrane bioreactor (PAC-MBR) and biological activated carbon reactor (BAC). The fundamentals of using activated carbon adsorption process integrated with biological treatment is discussed in the subsequent section of the chapter.