Removal of 4-nitrophenol from binary aqueous solution with aniline by granular activated carbon using Taguchi's design of experimental methodology

This paper reports the studies on the simultaneous removal of aniline and 4-nitrophenol from aqueous solutions of the binaries using granular activated carbon as an adsorbent. The effect of operating parameters such as initial component concentrations, temperature, adsorbent dosage and contact time on the adsorption of the above said mixtures of solutes in the binary aqueous solution was studied. Taguchi's method of design of experiments was used to study the effect of each parameter at three levels on the selected response characteristic (total amount of solutes adsorbed on granular activated carbon (q (tot) , mmol/g)).The analysis of variance shows that the adsorbent dosage is the most significant parameter affecting the adsorption process with 22.42 and 37.62% contribution to q (tot) and signal-to-noise ratio data. The contribution of interactions between initial concentration of binary components is also significant. Confirmation experiments were carried out to check the effectiveness of the Taguchi's methodology at the optimum levels of process parameters.