The Study of Adsorption of Surfactant and Ecotoxicity Value by Torrefied Wood Flour

The area with damaged wood by pest in Korea currently covers about 10.1 thousand hectares, which is annually increasing. In this study, an application possibility of torrefied wood flour made from those damaged wood as a water treatment agent has been examined as compared with activated carbon, the existing one. Torrefied wood flour has been manufactured out of damaged wood by pest under the condition of high heat treatment, and an experiment with surfactant on the effect of water treatment has been conducted using to the torrefied wood flour through this study. While surfactant is a major cause of water pollution, it is being used in various ways such as medicine, detergent and agricultural chemicals, which brings about many social problems. In the experiment, adsorbent was mixed with C-PAM, torrefied wood flour and activated carbon in a ratio of ten to one respectively. Also, activated carbon, a current water treatment agent, was to be used as comparative material. Biodegradability, adsorption performance according to the change of concentration, and ecotoxicity value of surfactant has been tested in this study to figure out its possibility as an adsorbent. It has been confirmed that the surfactant degraded by about 90% within 15 days. In the light of the change in concentration of surfactant, both torrefied wood flour and activated carbon have the adsorption capacity as surfactant. It appeared that the adsorption performance of torrefied wood flour was about 20% higher than that of activated carbon when its dosage condition was 2%. In addition, the TU value in ecotoxicity from the filtrate of the processed torrefied wood flour with the highest adsorption. In conclusion of the study, it has been confirmed that, based on the result of ecotoxicity value and adsorption performance of surfactant, torrefied wood flour has an application possibility as a water treatment agent which can replace activated carbon.