With the increasing emphasis on environmental protection, circular economy, and low-emission industrial production, the problem of post-production wastewater purification is attracting more and more attention. Among the pollutants found in aqueous solutions, special attention should be paid to high-value chemical compounds that can be reused. Glycolic acid is one of them.
In this paper, we present the results of scientific studies are showing the relationship between the salt content in post-production wastewater aqueous solutions and the rate and efficiency of the process of removing glycolic acid from those solutions by adsorption on carriers and ion-exchange resins. The aims of the presented studies to investigate batch adsorption of glycolic acid from aqueous solution parameters as adsorption efficiencies, equilibrium characteristics for Langmuir and Freundlich equations, thermodynamic parameters of the process, the effect of the presence of sodium chloride on the adsorption process, and determining breakthrough curves for A103S and A1496 ion-exchange resins in the dynamic adsorption process.