Efficiency of Sawdust in Removal of Methylene Blue from Aqueous Solution - A Case Study

摘要

The release of untreated waste water containing the dyes is a great concern and challenge to engineers and environmentalists. Presence of methylene blue in resources of water causes the damage to aquatic life, plant life and human beings. Removal of methylene blue, a cationic dye from aqueous solution using sawdust was studied. Batch process was used to study the effect of influencing parameters like pH value, initial concentration, dose of sawdust, contact time on adsorption of methylene blue on sawdust. The influencing parameters were analyzed to obtain the optimized conditions for adsorption of methylene blue on sawdust. It was observed that maximum adsorption occurs for aqueous solution of 10 mg/l concentration at pH of 8 with dose of 110 mg and within shaken time interval of 20 minutes. Experimental data were fitted to Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption isotherms. The maximum adsorption capacity of sawdust was observed as 7.21 mg/g at a correlation coefficient of 0.968. The heterogeneity factor of Freundlich isotherm model was obtained less than 1 which indicates that adsorption follows a normal Langmuir isotherm. It was observed that Langmuir and Freundlich models were fit almost close to the experimental data. Study shows that sawdust can be used effectively for the removal of methylene blue from aqueous solution.