The Study of the Adsorption of Reactive Blue 19 Dye by Activated Carbon from Pomegranate Residue

Wastewater containing dyes can be dangerous and toxic. Therefore, simple and efficient treatment methods are investigated by the researchers. The main purpose of this research is preparing adsorbent from residuals and studying the performance of dye removal from aqueous solution. For this purpose, activated carbon based on pomegranate residual was prepared by phosphoric acid (37%) activation and was used to remove reactive blue 19 from aqueous solution. In addition to characterization of the activated carbon (morphological and textural properties of activated carbon), effect of operation parameters such as contact time, initial pH, adsorbent dose and initial dye concentration were evaluated on the dye removal. The surface area (SBET) of the activated carbon was determined as 572.53 m2/g and the maximum dye removal efficiency (98.16%) was observed at 5 minutes contact time, initial pH 11, 3.5 gr/L the adsorbent and 300 mg/L initial dye concentration. Finally, adsorption isotherms (Langmuir, Freundlich and Temkin) and kinetic studies (the pseudo first-order, pseudo-second-order, Elovich and intraparticle diffusion kinetic models) studies showed the adsorption process follows a Langmuir isotherm equation (R2=0.955) and the pseudo-second order kinetic model (R2=0.997).