Is adsorption onto activated carbon a feasible drinking water treatment option for persistent and mobile substances?

Persistent and mobile (PM) substances among the organic micropollutants have gained increasing interest since their inherent properties enable them to enrich in water cycles. This study set out to investigate the potential of adsorption onto activated carbon as a drinking water treatment option for 19 PM candidates in batch experiments in a drinking water matrix using a microporous and a mesoporous activated carbon. Overall, adsorption of PM candidates proved to be very variable and the extent of removal could not be directly related to molecular properties. At an activated carbon dose of 10 mg/L and 48 h contact time, five (out of 19) substances were readily removed (≥ 80%), among them N-(3-(dimethylamino)-propyl)methacrylamide, which was investigated for the first time. For five other substances, no or negligible removal (< 20%) was observed, including 2-methyl-2-propene-1-sulfonic acid and 4‑hydroxy-1-(2-hydroxyethyl)-2,2,6,6,-tetramethylpiperidine. For the former, current state of the art adsorption processes may pose a sufficient barrier. Additionally, substance specific surrogate correlations between removals and UVA

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Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.