| Resumo: | Recent decades have witnessed a growing awareness and concern about the availability and quality of drinking water. The impact on human health of high toxicity compounds, including heavy metal, such as lead, cadmium, arsenic, among others, has lead to ever lower limits for a wide variety of chemicals. To respond to these challenges there is a need to develop new and even better methods to purify drinking water. Besides experimental work, process modeling and simulation plays a key role in the development of new treatment processes for drinking water. This paper focuses on the separation of heavy metals from drinking water by adsorption, in particular for arsenic removal. Common modeling and simulation strategies for this process are presented, being their relative merits discussed and assessed. The process is illustrated with real experimental data obtained from an adsorption system based on a modified magnetic zeolite. This article also examines how modeling and simulation can be used in practice, to support the development of new and better processes for the removal of heavy metals from drinking water, to improve the purification process, and meet the current and future requirements.
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