Remediation of Chlorophenolic Compounds from Paper Mill Effluent Using High-Quality Activated Carbon from Mixed Plastic Waste

The present study investigated the adsorption efficiency of laboratory-produced activated carbon (AC) from pyrolysis of mix waste plastic (MWP) for treating paper mill effluent. In the present work, adsorbent was prepared from MWP and was characterized in comparison to commercial adsorbents. A lab scale adsorption study was performed in 100 mL batch experiments to get the optimized condition of different variables by eliminating the pollutants from E OP wastewater and was found as AC dose 10.0 g/100 mL, temperature 35 °C, agitation rate 150 rpm, contact time 7 h, and pH 9.0. The E OP wastewater was analyzed for different quality parameters after treating with prepared AC (PW-AC) and two commercial ACs (SC-AC and M-AC) at optimized conditions. The efficiency of ACs was found to be in order as M-AC>PW-AC>SC-AC. The optimized conditions were applied for the removal of chlorophenols using different ACs in comparison to control E OP wastewater. The study revealed that elimination of chlorophenolic compounds from E OP wastewater (7824 ng/L) was the highest in M-AC treatment followed by PW-AC and SC-AC, i.e., 1426 ng/L, 1759 ng/L, and 2200 ng/L, respectively. PW-AC had major impacts on reduction of chloroguaiacols (82%) as well as chlorophenols (80.7%) that were present in chief amount in E OP wastewater. PW-AC was found to be a capable adsorbent for the removal of chlorophenolic compounds from the most toxic bleaching effluents of pulp and paper industry.