Russian chemists from the Perm National Research Polytechnic University have developed a method for reusable filters to purify water from toxic phenolic waste, RT was told in the press service of the university.

The results of the study were published in the collection of materials of the All-Russian scientific and practical conference with international participation “Chemistry.

Ecology.

Urbanism" (2022).

As the authors of the work recall, phenol is a highly toxic substance.

When ingested, it can cause serious poisoning, disruption of the functions of the nervous system and respiration, indigestion, and upon contact with skin or mucous membranes, burns.

  • Perm Polytechnic University

  • © pstu.ru

Despite this, phenol is widely used in industry - for example, in the oil and coke industries.

Meanwhile, the purification of wastewater from enterprises from phenol is difficult.

As one of the developers of the methodology, a postgraduate student of the Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology of the Perm Polytechnic University, Yegor Pershin, said, the substance, among other things, has bactericidal properties and the effluents polluted by it cannot be sent to biological treatment facilities.

In this case, other technologies are used to purify water, including adsorption using special carbon filters.

Such installations make it possible to almost completely purify water from phenol.

However, after a single use, carbon filters must be disposed of and replaced.

Scientists proposed to restore the adsorption properties of coal with the help of special microorganisms capable of decomposing phenol in micropores.

“In order to restore the properties of the filters, we isolated a culture of microorganisms from activated sludge and adapted it to phenol.

We have selected the conditions under which bacteria remain viable in a nutrient medium in the presence of a pollutant.

Activated carbons saturated with phenol were immersed in a solution with microorganisms at a temperature of 30°C for 3–4 days and constantly stirred.

Then we separated them from the liquid, washed and dried.

The absorption capacity of active carbons after biochemical treatment reached the initial value, and in some cases even exceeded it,” said Elena Farberova, Ph.D.

The use of this technology will make it possible to reuse industrial filters and reduce the cost of wastewater treatment for enterprises, the authors of the work believe.