Masoud Mofarahi

In present research, natural and modified zeolites with sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) were investigated for removing kinetic hydrate inhibitor (KHI) compounds from waterbodies. Natural zeolite (NZ) and SDS-modified zeolite (SMZ) presented BET surface area of 44.83 and 23.71 m2/g and pore volume of 0.031 and 0.078 cm3 /g, respectively. Experimental conditions namely the effect of solution pH (3–9), temperature (15–45 ℃), initial concentration (100–500 mg/L), and varying adsorbent dosage (15–45 g/L) were surveyed. The maximum removal efficiency of KHI was attained at 53.1 % and 43.6 % for SMZ with an increase in adsorbent quantity and solution pH. The findings exhibited that the KHI removal percentage and capability of KHI decreased from 46 to 37 % and 0.86 to 0.68 mg/g for SMZ, respectively. Furthermore, the pseudo-second order was fitted on the adsorption mechanism with R2 > 0.98 at different concentrations and the experimental data was illustrated by Freundlich isotherm R2 > 0.98 at different temperatures. It was found that values of ΔH◦ in the KHI adsorption on NZ and SMZ were − 12.99 and − 10.3 kJ mol− 1, which predicted an exothermic adsorption and ΔS◦ <0 showed the solid-solute interface declined randomness. The results of this study suggest that SMZ is an economical and high potential adsorbent for KHI wastewater treatment.