Hydrated zirconia-loaded resin for adsorptive removal of phosphate from wastewater.

• A zirconia-modified resin D280-Zr was developed for the P removal from wastewater. • D280-Zr had brilliant P adsorption performance with efficiency reached 98%. • D280-Zr exhibited superior adsorption selectivity at coexisting competitive anions. • D280-Zr could be reused for more than 6 times with adsorption efficiency above 80%. • D280-Zr fixed bed had application potential to absorb P from sewage. Adsorption of phosphorus by Zr-based materials has attracted more and more attention. However, the use of these materials was still limited due to the influence of coexisting ions and poor regeneration ability. In this study, hydrated zirconia was loaded into anion exchange resin (D280) to develop phosphorus adsorption material (D280-Zr). As a contrast, the phosphorus adsorption material HZO-201 was prepared by hydrating zirconia with large pore diameter anion resin D201. The samples were characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM) with an EDX (energy dispersive X-ray), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). Zirconium was successfully loaded onto the D280 and surface hydroxyl groups on D280-Zr played a significant role. Through batch adsorption experiments, the maximum adsorption amount of D280-Zr was 47.2198 mg P/g at temperature of 30 °C and pH 6−7. Adsorption isotherms could be described by the Langmuir model, and the adsorption kinetics were well described by the pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second-order model. Co-existing ions (Cl−, NO 3 −, HCO 3 −) had minimum effect on adsorption performance with efficiency above 80%. Through six cycles of regeneration, the adsorption efficiency was still above 80%. After treatment with D280-Zr packed bed column, the effluent could meet the A discharge standard in China of P < 0.5 mg/L in wastewater, and the treated water volume reached about 3500 times the bad volume (3500 BV). The results illustrated that D280-Zr was an effective phosphorus adsorption material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]