evaluation of formaldehyde wastewater adsorption on human hair

background: one of the pollutant components that can be observed in many industrial wastewaters is formaldehyde. the biological treatment of the wastewater contaminated by formaldehyde is very difficult due to its antibacterial property. however the removal of formaldehyde using adsorption process is feasible but it may be expensive. the main purpose of this study is to examine the adsorption of formaldehyde in assistance of a natural adsorbent (human hair). human hair is cheap and it can be disposed by common methods such as incineration. also finding of the optimum conditions of this process were taken into account. methods: in this study, the synthetic wastewater contaminated by formaldehyde in a specified volume and concentration was contacted with human hair for a period of time. the concentration of formaldehyde in the wastewater was measured during the adsorption process using chemical oxygen demand method (cod). then the optimum values of the parameters such as ph, the temperature and the hydraulic retention time were evaluated by one factor at a time method. findings: the findings obtained indicated that formaldehyde can be adsorbed on human hair significantly. also it was revealed that the increase of hydraulic retention time up to 15 hours could increase the formaldehyde removal efficiency, the optimum values of ph was 7 and unexpectedly rising the temperature increased the amount of formaldehyde adsorbed on human hair. conclusion: the attained results from this research showed that the adsorption of the pollutants by natural and cheap adsorption such as human hair is possible. it was also revealed that formaldehyde can be removed from wastewater with a quite high efficiently using human hair as an adsorbent.