Abstract
The increase in population, urbanization and industrialization put a pressure on water resources management in Egypt. Ammonia is one of the significant sources of the water pollution from Abo Rawash in Rosetta branch of Nile River. When ammonia is present in water at high enough levels, leading to potentially death to aquatic animals. Searching for the best environmental and economical sound solution is an important point.
Activated carbon was prepared by chemical activation of low cost waste, dates stone, called activated date pits (ADP) was used to remove ammonia from water. Equilibrium adsorption isotherm of ammonia from wastewater was investigated. Different operating parameters were examined to obtain the maximum removal efficiency, such as operating temperature, mass of ADP, ammonia concentration and agitation speed. The equilibrium time was reached after 180 minutes of contact time, however, the optimum agitation speed was 500 rpm. The study of kinetic models showed the reaction follows the first order model. Moreover, equilibrium adsorption data fitted the Langmuir adsorption isotherm well with R2 > 0.99. The obtained results showed that the maximum adsorption capacity of ADP for the removal of ammonia was reached to 37% at 333 K.