Removal of Methylene Blue from Aqueous Solution by Activated Carbon from Aloe Vera Wastes

Abstract

Background: Many organic and inorganic pollutants are discharged by various industries into the water bodies. One of the most important pollutants is dye materials that have adverse effects on human health. Objectives: In this study, Aloe Vera wastes-based activated carbon (AV-AC) was used as a low-cost sorbent for the removal of methylene blue (MB) as a textile dye from liquid medium. Methods: The effect of different parameters such as contact time, pH, adsorbent dosage, and initial dye concentration was investigated on the sorption of MB. The experimental data were examined by various kinetic and isotherm models. Results: The equilibrium was obtained at contact time of 40 minutes. Fitting the experimental data to different kinetics and isotherms models indicated that the experimental data were well fitted by the pseudo-second-order kinetic and Freundlich isotherm models. Conclusions: The maximum adsorption capacity was 129.87 mg/g. Due to low cost and high uptake capacity, Aloe Vera wastes can be considered as one effective sorbent for removal of MB.

Removal of Congo red dye from aqueous solutions by a low-cost adsorbent: activated carbon prepared from Aloe vera leaves shell

“…Water pollution caused by discharge of wastewater as a result of industrial activities has been considered one of the grave environmental issues in the world, especially in developing countries (1)(2)(3). The discharge of many organic and inorganic pollutants into water media by different industries, as a global environmental problem, has stimulated worldwide attention because of their harmful effects on the environment and also human health (4,5).…”

“…Various industries generate large volumes of dye containing effluents, such as the textiles, paper, rubber, leather, cosmetics, and food industries. The disposal of these coloured wastewaters without acceptable treatment into aquatic bodies will adversely influence the natural aquatic environment as well as have carcinogenic and mutagenic effects on human beings (6,7). Thus, removal of these dyes is essential before these are discharged into the water bodies (8).…”

“…Among these processes, the adsorption technique is current due to its simplicity, high sorption capacity, environmental friendliness, non-toxicity, and availability of a wide range of sorbents. Adsorption onto activated carbon because of its high surface area and high uptake capacity has been commonly used as an adsorbent for the remove of organic pollutants, but it is high-priced, and is hard to regenerate (2,13). In addition to activated carbon, some adsorbentssuch as montmorillonite (14), rice husk (15), bentonite (16), rice hull ash (17), Azadirachta indica leaf (18), Jujuba seeds (19), red mud (20), polypyrrole-polyaniline nanofibres (21), anion exchange membrane (22), and ball-milled sugarcane bagasse (23)-have been employed for the removal of CR dye.…”

Adsorption of Congo Red Dye from Aqueous Solutions by Montmorillonite as a Low-cost Adsorbent

“…The solution pH changes the surface properties of the adsorbent and the level of adsorbate ionization (Basiri et al 2015;Omidi-Khaniabadi et al 2015). Furthermore, the uptake of adsorbate is affected by the solution pH, owing to the sorption of H + and OH − ions in the liquid (Chatterjee, Lee, and Woo 2010;Du et al 2014).…”

“…Among these processes, adsorption methods have gained a considerable attention due to simplicity, high sorption capacity, eco-friendly, non-toxicity and efficiency for the removal a wide range of sorbents. Because of its high surface area and its high uptake capacity, activated carbon has been commonly used as an adsorbent for the removal of organic pollutants, but it is expensive and difficult to regenerate (Chen and Zhao 2009;Omidi-Khaniabadi et al 2015). In addition to activated carbon, some non-conventional adsorbents such as Aloe Vera leaves (Omidi-Khaniabadi et al 2016a), montmorillonite (Nourmoradi, Zabihollahi, and Pourzamani 2016a;Wang and Wang 2007), rice husk (Han et al 2008), bentonite (Bulut, Zacar, and Engil 2008), rice hull ash (Chou, Tsai, and Lo 2001), Azadirachta indica leaf (Bhattacharrya and Sharma 2004), Jujuba seeds (Reddy, Sivaramakrishna, and Reddy 2012), red mud (Tor and Cengeloglu 2006), polypyrrole-polyaniline nanofibres (Bhaumik, McCrindle, and Maity 2013), anion exchange membrane (Khan et al 2015), and ball-milled sugarcane bagasse (Zhang et al 2011) have been employed for the sorption of CR dye from aqueous media.…”