• Aqueous stream discharges contain various compounds that may be removed before recycling the water using multicomponent adsorption; wherein, the affinities of different solutes in the multicomponent mixture towards the adsorbent may be different from the affinities when these individual solutes are present alone in the solution.
• When a large number of components (>3) is involved, the multicomponent adsorption experiments and analytical methods may become tedious, expensive and time consuming.
• Multicomponent adsorption isotherms are often predicted from single component isotherms, formulation of multicomponent isotherms through the development of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models, empirical model development using design of experiments (DOE), etc. However, we realized that factoring in the effects of process conditions as well as mixture compositions on adsorbent capacity and interpreting their individual and joint influence is not straightforward.

• Thus, the present patent herein discloses a method that addresses the above issues.

The invention herein discloses a method to maximize multicomponent adsorption of the solutes from an aqueous stream discharge by increasing the total solute loading (qTotal) of the adsorbent to the maximum loading capacity (global maximum).

The experimental and statistical validation of Mixture Process Variable (MPV) design determines the main and interaction effects of mixture compositions, pH, adsorbent dose & adsorbent type on the qTotal for arriving at the global optimum.

Further, arrive at a loci of maximum adsorbent loading en route to the globally optimum qTotal from any initial composition and process conditions using enhanced ridge analysis and numerical constrained optimization techniques.

Where, qTotal = total solute mass loading on the adsorbent, also termed as total adsorption capacity and total adsorbent loading.

Global maximum: is the maximum possible total solute loading in the adsorbent within the bounds of the experimental variables chosen.

Method is Provided in the PDF available for download.