ABSTRACT
The dye-contaminated wastewater discharged from various industries such as dye manufacturing, paint, textile, paper, and cosmetic is a prime source of surface water pollution having serious detrimental effects on both the environment and human beings. These hazardous dyes when exposed to water obstruct the penetration of sunlight into the water and thus restrain aquatic plants from generating photosynthetic compounds. Moreover, some dyes are potential cancer-causing and also negatively impact the human nervous and respiratory systems. In this current study, modification of coconut coir powder (CCP) was carried out through cationic surfactant treatment and was successively utilized as the adsorbent for decoloring anionic dye (acid blue 185 (AB 185)) containing waste stream. Further, a comparative investigation of the dye removal efficiency of raw CCP and surfactant-modified coconut coir powder (SMCCP) as the adsorbent was studied. On surfactant treatment, using a very minimal SMCCP dosage of 8.3 g/L, a very high percentage dye removal of 98.4% is possible, whereas with raw CCP, even after using a higher dosage of 14 g/L, only 70.1% dye removal can be achieved. Characterization of SMCCP adsorbent was done by Fourier transform infrared, thermogravimetric, X-ray, and scanning electron microscope analyses. Furthermore, the optimization of critical operating parameters was investigated for the effective adsorption of AB 185 dye in batch mode. The adsorption of AB 185 onto SMCCP was a thermodynamically spontaneous endothermic process, following the Langmuir isotherm and pseudo-second-order kinetic model. Moreover, regeneration of exhausted SMCCP by 0.1 (M) NaOH was achieved with a satisfactorily high recovery of 97% in the first cycle. Subsequently, SMCCP can be successfully reutilized for five consecutive cycles with a loss of 17.6% in the total adsorption capacity. With all such advantages, the present study delivers a new paradigm to utilize the novel adsorbent SMCCP as a promising eco-friendly adsorbent aided by its advantage of regeneration and reusability for the treatment of dye-contaminated wastewater.
ABSTRACT
Pervaporation membranes were made by solution blending of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and sodium alginate (SA). Accordingly, five different blends with PVA:SA weight ratio of 75:25, 50:50, 25:75, 20:80 and 10:90 designated as PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4 and PS5, respectively, were prepared. Each of these blends was crosslinked with 2, 4 and 6 wt% glutaraldehyde and the resulting fifteen (5 × 3) membranes were used for pervaporative separation of 90 wt% dioxane in water. The membranes made from PS4 and PS5 were not stable during pervaporation experiments. Among the stable membranes PS3 membrane crosslinked with 2 wt% glutaraldehyde showed the best results for flux and selectivity. Thus, it was filled with nano size sodium montmorillonite filler and used for separation of dioxane-water mixtures over the entire concentration range of 80-99.5 wt% dioxane in water. The membranes were also characterized by mechanical properties, FTIR, SEM, DTA-TGA and XRD.
