Bio Adsorption: An Eco-friendly Alternative for Industrial Effluents Treatment 49

The successful design of a fixed-bed column adsorption process requires the prediction of

the effluent breakthrough curve (Chen et al. 2012), so the parameters obtained together with the

adsorbent saturation times are very useful and represent a starting point for future studies. The

description of these breakthrough curves was shown in the work presented by Saralegui et al. (2022).

The optimization of a continuous reactor, varying parameters such as the amount of each adsorbent,

flow rate, column size, among others are the subject of further studies.

3.6 Digital Application

The digital application called Reactor App was developed ad-hoc in order to manage the complex

selection of the most efficient system for treatment. The application can be accessed by entering:

https://laquisihereactorapp.fi.uba.ar/.

Reactor App (Figure 3.5) is a software designed with several objectives:

1. To assemble a database of the experimental data obtained for each of the sorbent-adsorbent

systems studied, including data from the Argentinean legislation for effluent discharge.

2. To design a software that orders, analyses and adjusts theoretical or empirical models for the

design of an adsorbate-adsorbent reactor, providing different mathematical models that assist in

the design of reactors for business applications (tanneries, breweries, chrome works).

3. To create a platform for the laboratory to disseminate its work and to advise different

organizations on different problems such as water treatment and effluent discharge.

The system has three types of user profile (Figure 3.6):

● External user, who will be able to view limited system information and will have reduced

system functionality

● Laboratory user, who will have all the information and functionality of the system, without

being able to alter the system information.

● Administrator user, who will also be able to modify the system information and moderate

the users who have access to the application.

For reactor design (Saralegui et al. 2022), taking certain considerations into account, this

application provides a first approximation of a continuous reactor using parameters estimated

through the development of batch tests.

Adsorbates

Reactor volume

Search adsorbent

About the project

Adsorbents

Systems

Breakthrough curve

models

Calculation of curves

areas

Figure 3.5. Reactor App software home screen.