Abstract
Pollution of South Africa water puts a strain on natural resources and Aluminium
Powder Coating Effluent (APCE) is one of the pollution sources among industrial effluents.
These effluents contain high levels of sulphates about 1230 ppm. This study only focused on
the removal of sulphates. The objective of this study was to investigate the removal of
sulphates from APCE using Basic Oxygen Furnace Slag (BOFS) and Granulated Blast Furnace
Slag (GBFS) as an adsorbent. BOFS was used as the basis of all the experiments as it increased
the pH of the effluent to be around 12. BOFS removed more than 80% of sulphates.
Adsorption experiments were carried out under different operating conditions. Freundlich and
Langmuir isotherms were studied and the experimental data best fitted the Langmuir model.
Adsorption kinetics was also studied and the pseudo second order gave the best fit at all
operating conditions. This brought about a conclusion that BOFS can be used as an absorbent
for removal of sulphates.