Removal of COD in wastewater by activated carbon from rice husk

Organic pollution occurs due to the presence of organic compound that will causing oxygen depletion and gives potential adverse impacts on human health and the environment. Wastewater from the fish cracker industry typically has high chemical oxygen demand (COD) and it is needed to be treated before release to water bodies in order to reduce the organic pollution. The treatment of COD was done using rice husk activated carbon (RHAC) that produced from agricultural wastes that contributed to waste minimization and reduce the environmental pollution. Therefore, this study emphasized on the feasibility of rice husk activated carbon for removing the COD from fish cracker wastewater. lt was also to identify the optimization factors (pH, flow rate and initial concentration of COD) that affecting adsorption by rice husk activated carbon. RHAC was produced by chemical activation using phosphoric acid, H3PO4 and a real wastewater from fish cracker industry was collected, characterized and treated by using continuous fixed bed column adsorption method. The result shows that the adsorption of COD by RHAC was optimum at pH 2, flow rate 5 ml/min and 5 % v/v initial COD concentration. The highest percentage of COD removal achieved during adsorption for each parameter (pl-l, flow rate and initial COD concentration) was 65.87 %, 56.90 % and 31.82 % respectively. Thus, RHAC could be used to develop an alternative method and suitable carbonaceous substances that was used to treat water and wastewater. This study highlighted the capability of rice husks as adsorbent.