A Study of The Equilibrium, Kinetics, and Thermodynamics of Malachite Green Dye Adsorption Onto Lignin

Abstract

Malachite Green (MG), a cationic synthetic dye is considered hazardous when discharged into the water bodies without any adequate treatment. It can affect the multiple segments of the environment leading to irreversible persistent changes. So, there is a need for remediation with cost-effective method to remove dyes from effluents. Adsorption is one such technique to remove dyes from wastewater and is effective and economical. The present study describes the removal of MG cationic dye from wastewater using eco-friendly and biodegradable lignin extracted from hydrothermally treated rice straw by adsorption process. Functional group analysis and morphological characterisation was done to the extracted lignin after quantification. The maximum percent removal of MG 92 ± 0.2 % was observed from a series of batch experiments at optimum process parameters of: contact time 80 min, initial dye concentration 50 ppm, lignin dosage 0.25g, pH 7, temperature 300c and with 100 rpm agitation speed. The adsorption kinetics and isotherms were determined for the experimental data using four kinetic models (pseudo-first-order, second order, pseudo-second-order and intra-particle diffusion model) and two isotherm models (Langmuir and Freundlich). The results suggested that the kinetics data fit to the pseudo-second-order kinetic model with the maximum adsorption capacity 36.7 mg/g and the two isotherm models were applicable for the adsorption of MG onto the lignin. Additionally, the thermodynamic parameters ΔSo, ΔHo and ΔGo were evaluated. Therefore, lignin which is an environmental friendly and low cost carbon material that can be used as an adsorbent for dye removal.