Adsorption equilibrium and kinetics of selected phenoxyacid pesticides on activated carbon: effect of temperature

The temperature influence on equilibrium and kinetics of adsorption of 4-chlorophenoxyacetic and 3-bromophenoxypropionic acids from aqueous solutions on the Norit activated carbon was studied. The correlations between temperature and parameters characterizing adsorption process were found. Increase of rate of adsorption kinetics of phenoxy pesticides with temperature was observed. The rates of adsorption were best described and fitted by multi-exponential equation; simple approximate solution was obtained by using MOE equation (contribution of second order kinetics was always below 80 %). Intermediate quality of description and good correlation with temperature changes was attained for fractal-like MOE kinetics. Slightly worse results were obtained for rate coefficients estimated by MOE fitting. Model-independent adsorption half-times are proposed as the best single descriptor of the experimental kinetic data. Its temperature dependence is strongly correlated with rate coefficients.