Parametric Study on the Reduction of Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) from Dairy Industry Wastewater Using Synthesized Graphene Oxide as Catalyst

Author : Magno, Christian Gil Muñoz
Major Adviser : Gatdula, Kristel M.
Committee Members : Dizon, Lisa Stephanie H.; Sanchez, Denise Ester S.
Year : 2019
Month : June
Type : Thesis
Degree: BS
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Abstract

Graphene Oxide (GO) was chemically synthesized from pure graphite powder using the Modified Hummers’ Method and successively used to reduce the Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) of dairy industry wastewater (DIW). The exfoliation of the graphite sheets signifies the complete oxidation during the synthesis based from the SEM image. The average pore volume of GO was 0.021 cc/g and its average pore radius was 88.321 Å based from the BJH analysis. Three parameters (pH, amount of adsorbent, contact time) were used in the experiment and a full factorial statistical design was used to confirm that pH and amount of adsorbent significantly affect the reduction of COD in DIW. The highest COD reduction value was 74.93% at pH=10, 0.5 g/L adsorbent dosage, and 5 min contact time. Basic condition and higher adsorbent dosage significantly reduced the COD as there will be more available active sites for adsorption process. Lastly, Freundlich isotherm is the most fitted isotherm compared to Langmuir and Temkin with an R2 value of 0.973. This shows that the COD was mostly considered as particulate materials that comes in different bulk micro-sizes; therefore, when the GO nanosheets aggregated, particulate materials were trapped between nanosheets that resulted to heterogenous layer of adsorbent upon adsorption process.


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