A bombastic approach to remove 2,4,6 Trichlorophenol from simulated wastewater via Progressive Freeze Concentration: effect of operating time and optimization by using Response Surface Methodology

2,4,6-Trichlorophenol (TCP) is a type of chlorophenol compound widely used in various formulations as herbicides, fungicides and glue preservatives. Its chemical properties make it become toxic, hazardous and carcinogenic to human and environment. Nowadays their amount in industrial wastewater are increasing and the presence of low concentration of TCP also can be an obstacles to the usage of wastewater. Thus, researchers have been trying to find the best solution to overcome this issue. One of the potential technologies that can take into consideration of this wastewater treatment is progressive freeze concentration (PFC). PFC is a process in which only a big single ice crystal is generated in the process to remove TCP from simulated wastewater for this research. In this research, the objectives are to determine the relationship between effectiveness of operation time in separation of TCP from simulated wastewater on effective partition constant (K) and TCP reduction (%) and to study the relationship between operation time and optimum condition in separation of TCP by using Response Surface Methodology (RSM). Hence, the effect of operation time ranging from 10 minutes to 50 minutes was investigated. From the experimental work, it was found that higher efficiency results at higher operating of time based on lower value of K is achieved at 40 minutes where the value of K is 0.49. Apart from that, the TCP reduction (%) was also calculated in order to determine the performance of the PFC system where at 40 minutes the TCP reduction (%) is 64.85%. The optimization by using RSM also was successfully applied to obtain the optimum condition of operating time and initial concentration for concentrating the simulated wastewater of TCP. According to STATISTICA software, the best K value could achieve is 0.13 when operating time is 82.92 minutes and initial concentration at 93.21 ppm. For TCP reduction (%), the highest value could obtain is 76.53% when operating time is 60.49 minutes and 51.34 ppm for initial concentration