PENENTUAN KONSTANTA FREUNDLICH PADA PENURUNAN KESADAHAN AIR DENGAN MENGGUNAKAN KARBON AKTIF

Abstract

Water is important for human being. It's used for the daily living need and industries. The ground water is one of the important source for drinking water, usually contains Calsium (Ca) and Magnesium (Mg) that causing the hardness. There are two kind of hardness, temporary and primary hardness. It can caused some bad layer in the bottom of kettle decrease the bubble of foam, and dangerous for the health. The purpose of this research with to find the Freundlich constant to decrease the hardness by active carbon, knowing the effect of using the active carbon in decreasing the hardness, and to know the optimal size of active carbon to decrease the hardness. The research was done experimentally to decrease the hardness by active carbon with flowing water in the 8,5 cm diameter and 5 cm high of pile - adsorber column, then analyzing the sample with EDT A. The fixed variable of this research were high of active carbons pile and debit. And the unfixed variable are size of carbon active, (-4+8), (-8+10), (-10) and the flowing direction, upstream and downstream, looked every 20 second with the range of 0-180 second. This research had the results of decreasing the hardness every second and every size of active carbon. The decreasing of hardness from the upstream, from the initial hardness 14, 2 mg/It become 5, 6 mg/It, and for the downstream from the initial hardness 16,48 mg/It become 6,4 mg/It. Freundlich constant for each variable were, for the upstream with carbon size (-4+8) mesh, kF = 1,6237 x 10-6,n = 0,999; (-8+10) mesh, kF = 1,8893 x 10-6,n = 1,000; (-10) mesh, kF = 2,0821 x 10-6,n =1,483. For the upstream with carbon size (-4+8) mesh, kF = 1,5603 x 10-6,n = 1,077; (-8+10) mesh, kF = 1,8587 x 10-6,n = 0,995; (-10) mesh, kF = 0,5998 x 10-6,n = 12,610. From this research can be concluded that active carbon as adsorben can be used to decrease the hardness of water. Th