Adsorption of some volatile organic compounds on geomaterials Original Research Article

Leaching of industrial waste storage settings can lead to severe water resource pollution. Geamaterial barriers made from cement, bentonite and active carbon can overcome such problems. The first part of this work considers the preparation the new geomaterials intended to the dangerous waste storage. These geornaterials have been prepared from Algerian origin clay bentonite materials, the cement, the active carbon and a polymer. Retention properties of such barriers towards some volatile organic compounds (phenol, chlorobenzene, O-xylene) have been assessed through the determination of adsorption isotherms using bath method. The study of different experimental equilibrium isotherms showed clearly the high efficiency of these new adsorbents toward VOCs. On the other hand, it has been shown that the retention of the volatile organic compounds is mainly due active carbon, or for a part, to the clay product of the geomaterial.