Fixed Bed Column Study for Removal of Basic Blue 90 Dye from Simulated Wastewater Using Hybrid Modified Rice Husk and Carbonized Palm Shell Adsorbents

Abstract

The presence of dye molecules in water channels is an emerging alarm to an environmental scientist. An environmental friendly and self-sustainable treatment method should be explored to address this problem. Therefore, the aim of this work was to investigate the adsorption of Basic blue 90 dye (BB-D) from synthetic waste water using hybrid modified adsorbent from blended rice husk (BRH) and carbonized palm shell (CPS) in single and multi- layered beds adsorption column. For this purpose, six types of adsorbents were prepared and used for dye removal which are one unmixed rice husk (100% BRH) adsorbent; one unmixed carbonized palm kernel shell (100% CPS) adsorbent; and four hybrid adsorbents prepared by mixing (BRH) and (CPS) with mixing ratios 20%,40%,60%,80% wt of BRH .Each adsorbent was characterized individually by elemental analysis, BET surface area, and Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM). Evaluating the performance of the column for each adsorbent was carried out by means of removal efficiency and area under the graph analysis. The results showed that, for both single and multi – layered bed column the adsorption of dye was strongly adsorbed by 100% RH (BRH)) with removal efficiency of 92.92%, and 97.17%, with least area under the graph of 575.95, and 571.05, respectively. As a conclusion, using unmixed rice husk as adsorbent for (BB-D) dye removal showed maximum removal efficiency with least area under the graph and mixing of rice husk with CPS as a hybrid adsorbent did not reveal any beneficial effect for increasing the removal efficiency of studied dye.