Modification of biochar prepared from olive oil processing waste to enhance phenol removal from synthetic and olive mill wastewater

ABSTRACT

Six biochars derived from olive mill solid waste were prepared by varying the temperature and treatment with FeCl₃. The adsorption capacity of the biochar increased with the pyrolysis temperature and was in the order pre-treated>post-treated>untreated. The Langmuir isotherm and the pseudo-second-order kinetic models best fit the experimental results. The 550°C pre-treated biochar had the highest adsorption capacity from aqueous solutions (103.9 and 73.9 mg.g⁻¹ at pH = 2 and 5, respectively). Chemisorption was the dominating mechanism. The adsorption capacity using olive mill wastewater was 51.3 mg.g⁻¹. This work demonstrates that waste can be reused within the process to achieve cleaner production.

KEYWORDS:

• Modified biochar
• FeCl₃ modification
• phenol
• adsorption
• olive mill wastewater

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Deanship of Research at the Jordan University of Science and Technology under grant number 131/2016.

Credit author statement

Ali El Hanandeh: Conceptualization; methodology; Writing- original-draft; Writing-review and editing; supervision; funding acquisition; software, formal analysis, verification, and visualization.

Ammar Albalasmeh: Writing-review and editing; resources; funding acquisition; data curation

Mamoun Gharaibeh: Writing-review and editing; resources; funding acquisition and Project administration

Mohammad Alajlouni: investigation; data curation.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deanship of Academic Research, Jordan University of Science and Technology [131/2016].