XXXI International Mineral Processing Congress 2024 Proceedings/Washington, DC/Sep 29–Oct 3 757
Effect of Varying Initial Concentration on Column
Saturation Time
The breakthrough curves shown in Figure 3 show that that
the time required for saturation increases with a lower ini-
tial concentration.
This phenomenon occurs because there are more ions
to be adsorbed, leading to adsorption binding sites within
the column saturating more rapidly. (Maji et al., 2007) This
is evidenced in Figure 3 by the steeper breakthrough curve
for the 1 mg/L As(V) initial concentration. Decreasing
this to 0.08 mg/L, on the other hand, shows an increased
saturation time, indicating that a larger volume of wastewa-
ter can be treated before the column is fully exhausted. This
can also be seen in Table 7.
Metal Removal
To further describe the column performance, the total
effluent concentration and percent metal removal were
measured for the studied range of concentrations. The
treatment of the wastewater with a higher initial concen-
tration resulted in effluent with a higher concentration.
For these cases, the effluent did not meet the DENR limit
Table 5. Saturation times for different column bed heights for constant flow rates and initial
As(V) concentrations
Flow Rate
(mL/min)
Initial Concentration
of As(V)
Column Bed
Height (m) Saturation Time
200 0.08 mg/L 1 7225 mins
(120 hrs)
Longer Saturation Time
0.5 4260 mins
(71 hrs)
Shorter Saturation Time
1000 1 mg/L 1 590 mins
(10 hrs)
Longer Saturation Time
0.5 395 mins
(6 hrs)
Shorter Saturation Time
Figure 1. Breakthrough curves of single-component As(V) wastewater with varied column bed
heights Flow rate =200 mL/min, Initial concentration =0.08 mg/L