Facile synthesis of activated carbon from macadamia nut shells and its application for the removal of phthalate esters from drinking water

Herein, the removal of phthalate esters (PAEs) from drinking water using powdered activated carbon (PAC) is reported. Advanced and state-of-the-art techniques were utilised to ascertain the physico-chemical properties of activated carbon and drinking water samples, i.e., before and after treatment. First, drinking water was treated using batch experimental protocol (i.e., one-factor-at-a-time (OFAT) method) and the premier quest was to determine the optimum PAC dosage required for the removal of PAEs from drinking water, and this was then used for full scale application in real drinking water treatment plant. Under the optimised dosage (0.25 g/L), results confirmed effective removal of PAEs by registering ≥ 80 % for all the PAEs and the adsorption capacities of ≥ 3.2 mg/g. Post adsorption, surface properties of the used PAC were observed to have significantly reduced with S BET reducing from 525.89 to 497.68 m 2 /g, L BET reducing from 1146.96 to 965.20 m 2 /g, and total pore volume reducing from 0.38 to 0.32 cm 3 /g, thus, to a larger extent, confirming that there is adsorption of PAEs onto the surface of PAC as attested by the reduction of the surface properties. Therefore, it can be concluded that PAC derived from the waste macadamia nut shells could be classified to be amongst the most promising adsorbents for the removal of PAEs from drinking water.