Response Surface Method for NH4+ -N Adsorption onto zeolites

Abstract

Foot-and-mouth disease occurred in south Korea and the outbreak in 2010 led to a mass cull of livestock in an attempt to stop the virus spreading. To prevent the further infection tremendous number of the infected or culled stocks were buried around farm. In this study batch adsorption experiment was investigated on NH₄+-N adsorption from a livestock buried site located in Korea. NH₄+-N adsorption appeared to follow the pseudo first-order kinetics. The adsorption process in this study was a function of parameters such as mass of zeolites NH₄+-N concentration and mass of sorbents which was modeled with the Response Surface Methodology (RSM). Analysis of variance showed satisfactory prediction of second-order regression models. The predicted NH₄+-N adsorption after process optimization agreed satisfactorily with the experimental data. This study clearly showed that RSM is a viable tool to optimize the operating conditions to maximize NH₄+-N adsorption.