Scavenging methyl orange dye from aqueous solution using an effective low-cost activated carbon prepared from delonix Regia seeds

Abstract

An increasing textile industry has exacerbated the serious problem of dealing with industrial effluent that contains toxic dye molecules. Despite the development of various techniques for adsorbing dyes in wastewater, many researchers have yet to expand a highly efficient technique for the revival of dye molecules from textile waste water. However, adsorption techniques using low cost, eco-friendly, effective adsorbents are extensively used due to their simplicity and good efficiency. A novel approach for the capture of dye molecules using a composite inexpensive activated carbon (AC) adsorbent synthesized from Gulmohar (GM) plant seeds has been proposed in this study. Prepared AC before and after adsorption of Methyl Orange (MO) has been characterized by SEM, EDX and FT-IR. Experimental adsorption data of chosen anionic dyes fits several kinetic and isotherm models. Kinetic studies reveal that a pseudo-second order is the mainly suitable model in the adsorption process. The equilibrium adsorption data of anionic dye show that the system followed the Langmuir adsorption isotherm. In addition, through thermodynamic calculations the negative value of ΔG° and negative value of ΔH° show that the adsorption is a spontaneous and exothermic process. All the above results conclude that the GMAC can be used as an effective absorbent for removing dyes from wastewater.