Surfactant Enhanced Remediation: Removal of Water Hardness by Pseudoactivated Carbon Prepared from Wheat Husk

Batch tests were conducted using four groundwater samples high levels of total hardness such as 600.17, 800.42, 1088.85 and 1278.38 mg/L as CaCO3, so as water is not suitable for several industries. The work aimed to evaluate the feasibility of using powdered pseudoactivated carbon (PAC) prepared from wheat husk for the removal of water hardness and also to study of impact of sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) micelles on the removal. The ability of 0.05, 0.1, 0.5, 1.0 and 5.0 g/L PAC to soften a water was investigated by shaking 50 mL hard water with PAC at pH 5.0 and 25oC for 180 minutes. The effect of SDS was studied by running parallel tests with 10 mL of 3 g/L SDS solution. Equilibrium was attained within 2.00 hours with PAC and 1.25 hours with PAC + SDS. The maximum removal was found 27.8 % with 5 g/L PAC at pH 5, 25C for 600.17 mg/L hardness. With PAC + SDS the removal was enhanced to 81.1 % with 10 mL of 3 g/L SDS and 5 g/L of PAC for the same.