Estimating the activated carbon adsorption of organic chemicals in water

Abstract

Abstract The adsorbtion of an organic chemical on activated carbon can be estimated without experimentation by using either literature data or quantitative structure activity relationships (QSARs). This review focuses on the activated carbon adsorption of organic chemicals at low concentrations applicable to water treatment or natural water. High variability is found among the data in the six literature sources considered. However, high correlations often exist between the data in differing sources, implying that systematic differences and not just experimental irregularities are responsible for the variability. QSARs relate adsorbtion to easily obtained chemical descriptors. They can be used for estimating the adsorbtion of a chemical that is similar to the chemicals upon which the QS AR is based. The 13 QSARs considered in this review use methods based on octanol‐water partition coefficients, Polanyi potential theory, linear solvation energy relationships, molecular connectivity, and other physical/chemical descriptors. The QSARs demonstrate a high potential for accurately estimating adsorption, but are limited by the high variability of the underlying literature data.