Abstracto

Removal of methylene blue from aqueous solution onto a new cheap adsorbent (Aracaria cookii bark powder)

Polipalli Kalpana, Pulipati King

In the present investigation, the biosorption is carried out to test the suitability of abundantly available plant based material Araucaria cookii bark powder as a biosorbent for removal of methylene blue dye from aqueous solution. The equilibriumstudies were systematically carried out in a batch process, covering various process parameters that include contact time, adsorbent size and dosage, initial dye concentration and pH of the aqueous solution. It observed that there is a significant increase in percentage removal of methylene blue as pH increases from 2 to 4 and then decreases from 4 to 10. The optimum pH and contact time was found to be 4 and 15 minutes respectively. Equilibrium isotherm data were analyzed using the Langmuir, Freundlich and Temkin isotherms. The Freundlichmodel yields a much better fit than the other twomodels. In order to investigate the mechanism of sorption, kinetic data were modeled using the pseudo- first-order and pseudo-second-order models. Pseudo-second-order equation was the best applicable model to describe the sorption process. The maximum adsorption capacity of adsorbent was 91.46 mg/g