Method of determining the saturation time of an adsorbent

A method for determining the saturation duration of an adsorbent comprising the following steps:

• A) providing a filter (5) coated with the adsorbent, wherein
• the filter (5) has a filter outer side (5A) with a filter outer surface and a filter inner side (5B), a medium to be filtered with a DOC content is present on the filter outer side (5A) and the filtrate can be discharged via the filter inner side (5B),
• the adsorbent forms a layer with an adsorbent mass on the outside of the filter (5A) and is suitable for adsorbing dissolved organic carbon from the medium to be filtered,
• B) providing a pump (3) and a pressure measuring device (4) arranged between the pump (3) and the filter (5), wherein
• the pump (3) is suitable for pumping the medium to be filtered through the filter (5) at a pump flow rate, and
• the pressure measuring device (4) is suitable for determining the filtration pressure (p),
• C) starting of pumping the medium to be filtered through the filter (5),
• D) recording the temporal course of the filtration pressure (p) and deriving the filtration pressure increase rate as a quotient of filtration pressure increase per time unit, and
• E) identifying the saturation time (A, B, C, ST1, ST2, ST3) of the adsorbent as the time of a significant change in the filtration pressure increase rate and determine an associated saturation duration as the time from the start of pumping to the saturation time.