Removal and recovery of hazardous triphenylmethane dye, Methyl Violet through adsorption over granulated waste materials

Bottom Ash a power plant waste material and De-Oiled Soya, an agricultural waste product have been successfully used for the removal and recovery of a hazardous triphenylmethane dye-Methyl Violet, from wastewaters. The characterization of each adsorbent has been carried out by I.R. and D.T.A. curves. Batch adsorption studies have been made by measuring effects of pH, sieve size, amount of adsorbent, contact time, temperature, concentration of the adsorbate solution, etc. Kinetic studies have been used to determine the nature of rate controlling step of the processes and confirm the applicability of the first order rate expression in the ongoing adsorption process. Various thermodynamic parameters have also been calculated by applying the linear forms of Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption isotherms. The linear nature of adsorption isotherms obtained shows the dependence of the processes on the Freundlich and Langmuir isotherm models. Furthermore, to ascertain the adsorption processes to be particle diffusion or film diffusion mechanism, Boyd and Reichenberg's expressions have been applied. For both the adsorbents, column operations have been carried out for the bulk removal of the dye. The adsorbed dye has been recovered by eluting hydrochloric acid of pH 3 through exhausted columns. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.