Laila Abu-Lail, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 100 Institute Road, Worcester, MA 01609, John Bergendahl, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 100 Institute Road, Worcester, MA 01609, Robert Thompson, Chemical Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 100 Institute Road, Worcester, MA 01609, and Arjan Giaya, Triton Systems, Inc., 200 Turnpike Road, Chelmsford, MA 01824U.
Many powdered zeolites have been found to be effective at removing organics from water. But the passage of water through fixed beds of powdered zeolite produces high friction losses that are not present in flow through larger grain-sized, granular zeolites. In this work, batch and column adsorption of chloroform and methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) onto granular zeolites was investigated. From results of the batch equilibrium experiments, it was found that the zeolite adsorbent with the greatest removal capacity for MTBE and chloroform from water was granular ZSM-5. Column adsorption experiments of MTBE & chloroform were performed using granular ZSM-5. Breakthrough curves obtained from these column experiments were used to predict the dynamics of fixed bed adsorbers for treating water. The breakthrough curves obtained from the column adsorption experiments were fitted to the bed depth service time (BDST) model.