Abstract
Tertiary and advanced treatment for wastewater effluents introduces a powerful solution for reusing this water and overcoming the water shortage problem. In this work, the natural zeolite rock (NZR) is examined as an adsorbent for tertiary treatment of the secondary treated wastewater effluent. The research relies on an experimental program in a laboratory scale, and many parameters were investigated including the material size and pretreated processes for the rock samples. The pretreated processes included prewashing, socking, drying, and thermal treatment. The chemical analysis for wastewater samples was carried out before and after adding rocks. Furthermore, microstructural investigations by SEM and XRF techniques were adopted for rock samples before and after contact with wastewater. Results showed notable impacts for thermally treated samples in removing nitrite as the removal reached about 96%. Using NZR with wastewater demonstrated a slight reduction in BOD and COD values compared to the original wastewater sample. The SEM and XRF results showed the capability of NZR to exchange the cations with water, which makes NZR a promising material for purify the wastewater especially after applying thermal treatment.