Prediction of Fixed‐Bed Adsorber Removal of Organics in Unknown Mixtures

Abstract
A method is proposed to predict fixed‐bed adsorber removal of individual organic compounds and surrogate parameters such as total organic halogen (TOX or TOC) in the presence of an unknown adsorbing mixture by representing the adsorption behavior of the unknown mixture as one or two hypothetical components (HCs). The equilibrium parameters, concentrations and mass transfer parameters of the HCs are determined by comparing the behavior of a known compound in experiments with the unknown mixture to single solute experiments. The HC properties that are determined in this manner are then used in a mathematical model of fixed‐bed adsorption to predict the breakthrough of TOX and individual compounds in the unknown mixture. This HC procedure is verified by the satisfactory agreement of fixed‐bed predictions with fixed‐bed data for six synthetic organic compounds and TOX in an unknown mixture.