Impact of salinity and dispersed oil on adsorption of dissolved aromatic hydrocarbons by activated carbon and organoclay

•Powdered activated carbon (PAC) outperformed organoclay for dissolved aromatics removal•Dispersed oil reduced the adsorption capacity of PAC but not organoclay•Salinity did not affect phenol or naphthalene removal by PAC or BTMA-organoclay•Commercial organoclay had reduced adsorption capacity in saline water due to aggregation•PAC performed better in single solute systems than multi-solute systems Adsorption capacity of phenol and naphthalene by powdered activated carbon (PAC), a commercial organoclay (OC) and a lab synthesized organoclay (BTMA) was studied using batch adsorption experiments under variable feed water quality conditions including single- and multi- solute conditions, fresh water, saline water and oily-and-saline water. Increasing salinity levels was found to reduce adsorption capacity of OC, likely due to destabilization, aggregation and subsequent removal of organoclay from the water column, but did not negatively impact adsorption capacity of PAC or BTMA. Increased dispersed oil concentrations were found to reduce the surface area of all adsorbents. This decreased the adsorption capacity of PAC for both phenol and naphthalene, and reduced BTMA adsorption of phenol, but did not negatively affect naphthalene removals by either organoclay. The presence of naphthalene as a co-solute significantly reduced phenol adsorption by PAC, but had no impact on organoclay adsorption. These results indicated that adsorption by PAC occurred via a surface adsorption mechanism, while organoclay adsorption occurred by hydrophobic or pi electron interactions. In general, PAC was more sensitive to changes in water quality than either of the organoclays evaluated in this study. However, PAC exhibited a higher adsorption capacity for phenol and naphthalene compared to both organoclays even in adverse water quality conditions.