Study on the removal and transport and migration mechanism for As with activated sludge system

In this paper, the removal of As and the transport and migration of As at the process of activated sludge system was studied. The results showed that the activated sludge system has high removal efficiency for As, and the removal efficiency could be nearly 100%. The initial concentration of As has effect on the removal efficiency, and within the experimental scope, the increase of initial concentration of As improved the removal efficiency for As. The distribution of As in the surface and internal in activated sludge indicates that in the process of activated sludge, the As was first transferred from water to the surface of solid and was adsorbed by the surface and then transport to the interior of microbes and take part in some metabolisms of the microorganisms. The adsorption of As by activated sludge conforms to Freundlich adsorption isotherm, and the removal of As in activated sludge system follows to the pseudo second order reaction kinetics.