Modeling and Optimization of New Flocculant Dosage and pH for Flocculation: Removal of Pollutants from Wastewater

In this paper, a new ferric chloride-(polyvinylpyrrolidone-grafted-polyacrylamide) hybrid copolymer was successfully synthesized by free radical polymerization in solution using ceric ammonium nitrate as redox initiator. The hybrid copolymer was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Response surface methodology (RSM), involving central composite design (CCD) matrix with two of the most important operating variables in the flocculation process; hybrid copolymer dosage and pH were utilized for the study and for the optimization of the wastewater treatment process. Response surface analyses showed that the experimental data could be adequately fitted to quadratic polynomial models. Under the optimum conditions, the turbidity and chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiencies were 96.4% and 83.5% according to RSM optimization, whereas the optimum removals based on the genetic algorithm (GA) were 96.56% and 83.54% for the turbidity and COD removal models. Based on these results, wastewater treatment using this novel hybrid copolymer has proved to be an effective alternative in the overseeing of turbidity and COD problems of municipal wastewater.