Solid-liquid equilibrium for the system activated carbon and aqueous solutions of both phenol and dinitro-o-cresol

Water purification processes, based on rather severe chemical conditions, particularly oxidation, have a tendency to produce dangerous by-products. Among chemicals that undergo this transformation there are phenolic compounds which are quite usual contaminants in industrial wastewaters. Adsorption of phenolic compounds dissolved in aqueous solution by using industrial activated carbon is an interesting alternative since it makes possible to achieve a practically complete removal of the polluting compounds without any negative consequence. To this purpose, new equilibrium data for two pseudo binary systems: a) activated carbon - aqueous solutions of phenol; b) activated carbon - aqueous solutions of dinitro-o-cresol, along with new experimental data for the pseudo ternary system: c) activated carbon - aqueous solutions of both phenol and dinitro-o-cresol, were measured at 298.15 K and 308.15 K, after a proper characterization of the adsorption material as received by SICAV (Italy). All the pseudo binary SLE data are in good agreement with corresponding literature data, while for the pseudo ternary SLE is not possible any comparison. SLE data were satisfactorily correlated by a Freundlich based competitiv model.