Treating dye wastewater by an integrated process of adsorption using activated carbon and ultrafiltration

The investigation was undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of using activated carbon (AC) in conjunction with ultrafiltration (UF) in the removal of methylene blue (MB) from aqueous solutions. The combination of activated carbon with UF in this work was to exploit the high adsorption capabilities of AC and the particle removal ability of UF simultaneously. The process was experimentally investigated using granulated and commercial powder-activated carbons. Experiments were conducted in order to study the effects of carbon type, carbon dose, and operating pressure on the process performance. The results obtained showed that the combined process achieved better rejection of dye than the UF process. Furthermore, powder-activated carbons were more effective than the granulated type.