Removal of acetaldehyde form indoor air using NaA zeolite and Modernite

Abstract

Indoor pollution nowadays can have serious effects on people’s health. The most common indoor pollutants in urban and industrial areas are volatile organic compounds – VOCs, which include acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde vapors cause eye irritation, lung or respiratory tract problems and are considered cancerogenic. The aim of this research was to examine the adsorption properties of type NaA zeolite and Na-Form of modernite. Adsorption isotherms of acetaldehyde on the examined adsorbents were obtained by simulating adsorption in an indoor environment. The simulation chamber was set to the atmospheric pressure, the temperature of 25°C, and air humidity of 65%. The non-linear Langmuir model gave higher coefficients of determination (0.9675 and 0.9350, respectively) than those obtained using the Freundlich model (0.9563 and 0.9332, respectively), which is indicative of single-layer adsorption. Higher values of the Langmuir constant for the samples tested shows that there is only low affinity between the adsorbents examined and acetaldehyde. Maximum adsorption capacity (Q⁰_m) in the monolayer obtained using the Langmuir model is 3.387 mg/g for NaA zeolite and 2.5293 mg/g for modernite. From this it can be fairly assumed that NaA zeolite as an adsorbent, is more suitable for removing acetaldehyde from indoor air.