Endocrine disrupting compounds, which are the compounds having the ability to interfere with the hormonal system, have drawn growing attentions worldwide over the last decades, owing to their frequent detections in surface and ground water and their potential environmental and health hazards. Adsorption is one of the promising methods for the removal of EDCs in water. _{2 3}...[ Read more ]

Endocrine disrupting compounds, which are the compounds having the ability to interfere with the hormonal system, have drawn growing attentions worldwide over the last decades, owing to their frequent detections in surface and ground water and their potential environmental and health hazards. Adsorption is one of the promising methods for the removal of EDCs in water.

The purpose of this research is to evaluate the adsorption performance of various commercial adsorbents (activated carbon (AC), alumina (Al₂O₃) and hydrotalcite (HT)) and new adsorbents (MCM-41 and mesoporous carbon (MC)) toward different endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs). Six EDCs, namely caffeine (CF), carbamazepine (CBZ), diclofenac (DFS), estradiol (EE2), phthalates (KHP) and nonylphenol (NP), were selected to be the model pollutants. Detailed characterization tests of each adsorbent were conducted.

Adsorption performances of each adsorbent were evaluated through adsorption kinetics, equilibria and pH effect on the partition coefficient (K_d) of six EDCs in the single component system. The results of the adsorption kinetics and adsorption equilibria were modeled by kinetic equations (pseudo-first and pseudo-second order equation) and isotherm model (Langmuir isotherm model and Freundlich isotherm model) respectively. Those results on AC and HT were correlated to the hydrophobicity (logK_ow) and ease of ionization (pK_a) of EDCs.

More studies were done on AC. The binary component adsorption studies were presented with the modeling with Extended Langmuir isotherm and Ideal Adsorbed Solution (IAS) theory. Adsorption performance of EDC degradates on AC was demonstrated by the adsorption kinetics and equilibria study. Synergetic effect of adsorption of AC and ozonation were also studied and found that AC exerted the positive effect to increase the rate of ozonation. Adsorption thermodynamics on AC was also evaluated.