Abstract

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

Author(s): 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