Atrazine removal from water by activated charcoal cloths

Pollution control structures may be adapted to enhance the removal of nutrients and pesticides from water. Charcoal-like material is known to sorb organic compounds in solution, including atrazine, a herbicide used to control broadleaf weeds, which persists in soils and can migrate from soils to water bodies, ultimately affecting water quality. The primary goal of this study was to investigate if activated charcoal cloths (single-weave, SW; double-weave, DW; and knitted, KT) are more efficient to remove atrazine from aqueous solutions than a cloth without activated charcoal (control) currently used in pollution control structures. The approach consisted of sorption kinetics, flow-through, and desorption/degradation experiments using 50 and 1000 mg L-1 atrazine solutions. Results showed that within 30 min of contact time, the control sorbed from 22.6 to 36.1% of atrazine in solution; whereas the activated charcoal cloths sorbed from 76 to 99% of atrazine in solution (SW > KT > DW). The flow-through experiments showed that the SW sorbed 88.2, 76.1, and 52.2% of atrazine at the contact time of 0.75, 5, and 10 min, respectively. After 28 days of incubation, previously sorbed atrazine on the SW cloth did not degrade and <2.0% was desorbed. The results showed that activated charcoal cloths are a practical alternative for improving atrazine removal in water in pollution control structures. (c) 2020 International Research and Training Center on Erosion and Sedimentation and China Water and Power Press. Production and Hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).