In recent years, the perception that conventional treatment of waters and effluents produce secondary effluents containing various substances still considered toxic has increased the investigation for more efficient treatment methods. The adsorption process on activated carbons (ACs) is an acknowledged tertiary method or of post-treatment of effluents. In this work, several ACs obtained from the flamboyant pods were used for the first time for the treatment of effluents generated in an industrial laundry. The adsorbents produced by chemical activation and physical activation presented high surface areas (from 265.5 to 561.1 m² g⁻¹), microporous and mesoporous physical characteristic and various acidic and basic functional groups. Two types of effluents (one raw and another previously treated through activated sludge) were submitted to adsorption processes and a decrease of the initial values of apparent color, turbidity and COD was observed. On the other hand, the results indicated that the contribution of the porous membranes (used in the filtration step) for the adsorption process must be considered in order to assess the real adsorption capacity. Furthermore, the UV–vis spectra of the effluents indicated the ACs have a high capacity of adsorption of compounds which absorb in the visible and ultraviolet regions. The adsorption of several components present in the effluents suggests that the flamboyant pods can be explored to produce several ACs with potential to be applied together (as auxiliary agents) with conventional treatments and to improve the reuse of secondary effluents produced after biological treatment.

近年来，人们对水和废水的常规处理产生了含有仍被认为是有毒的各种物质的二次废水的看法增加了对更有效的处理方法的研究。活性炭（ACs）上的吸附过程是公认的第三方法或废水的后处理方法。在这项工作中，首次使用从华丽吊舱中获得的几种AC来处理工业衣物中产生的废水。通过化学活化和物理活化产生的吸附剂具有较高的表面积（从265.5至561.1 m ² g ^-1），微孔和中孔的物理特性以及各种酸性和碱性官能团。两种类型的废水（一种原料废水，另一种经过活性污泥预先处理）进行了吸附过程，并且观察到了表观颜色，浊度和COD的初始值降低了。另一方面，结果表明必须考虑多孔膜（在过滤步骤中使用）对吸附过程的贡献，以便评估实际的吸附能力。此外，废水的UV-vis光谱表明AC具有很高的吸附能力，可吸收在可见光和紫外线区域吸收的化合物。