Use of Drinking Water Sludge as Adsorbent for H2S Gas Removal from Biogas

Abstract

This paper reports the results of a research project, which attempts to produce a low-cost adsorbent material from waste (drinking water sludge). The main objective of this work is to study the characteristics of drinking water sludge for its adsorptive properties including morphology, surface area, porosity and chemical composition. The effect of activation conditions on H2S gas adsorption efficiency of drinking water sludge was experimented. In this study, raw drinking water sludge was divided into 3 groups. In the first group, drinking water sludge was only oven dried at 105°C. For the other 2 groups, drinking water sludge was soaked in 2.5 M NaOH solution. After soaking, the sludge was divided into 2 groups (group 2 and 3). The second group was washed with distilled water until pH 7; while the third group was not. Biogas from a swine farm was used with an initial H2S gas concentration in the range of 2,000 - 4,000 ppm. The material analysis showed that more surface area and total volume of sludge can be obtained after activated with NaOH. From the adsorption experiments, it was found that the highest adsorption capacity (qe) of 87.94 mg H2S/g adsorptive material can be achieved by using sludge from the third group. Moreover, by adding of 20 wt% iron filing into sludge of the third group the adsorption capacity increased to 105.22 mg H2S/g adsorptive material. Drinking water sludge can be considered as a high potential energy saving and low cost adsorbent for removal of H2S.

Keywords

• low-cost adsorbent
• drinking water sludge
• H2S adsorption
• waste utilization