Entrapped Peat in Alginate Beads as Green Adsorbent for the Elimination of Dye Compounds from Vinasses

It is known that peat can be a potential adsorbent to remove contaminants from wastewaters. When raw peat is used, many limitations exist: Natural peat has a low mechanical strength, high affinity for water, poor chemical stability and tendency to shrink and/or swell. In this work, in order to obtain a more manageable substrate, to be used as adsorbent, peat was entrapped in calcium alginate beads. Box-Behnken factorial design was used to obtain the best condition for the immobilization of peat in calcium alginate beads. The independent variables studied were: peat concentration, sodium alginate concentration and calcium chloride concentration, whereas the dependent variables studied were based on the variation of colour parameters after the treatment of vinasses with entrapped peat. High colour reductions can be achieved using entrapped peat formulated by mixing 2 % of peat with 3 % of sodium alginate and pumped it on calcium chloride (0.05 M).