Preparation and Characterization of Activated Carbon from Flower Waste Biomass for Methylene blue Removal
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Date
2019-11
Authors
Getu, Maru
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Activated carbon (AC) can be used as an adsorbent to remove pollutants from waste water streams.
520 kg flower biomass waste is generated daily at a single floriculture industry in Ethiopia. Despite
AC has been produced from different lignocellulosic biomass waste, utilizing Flower waste
biomass (FWB) as a precursor to produce AC has an advantage of being new raw material, easily
available, renewable precursor, and can be a way of reducing environmental pollution. This study
presents synthesis of AC from FWB by chemical activation method using ZnCl2 and removal of
methylene blue (MB) using the as-prepared AC. The parameters in the study were impregnation
ratio, carbonization temperature, and carbonization time. Higher BET surface area of 750 m
2
-1
g
,
pore volume of 1.91 cm
3
-1
g
and pore diameter of 1.89 nm
was obtained at 1:1 impregnation ratio,
°
500
C carbonization temperature, and 1 hr of carbonization time. Effect of adsorption dosage, PH,
initial dye concentration, and contact time on percentage removal of MB were studied. Maximum
removal of MB was recorded at 0.05 g adsorbent dosage, 60 min contact time, PH of 10, and initial
dye concentration of 10 mg L
-1
. Kinetics and isotherm studies showed that the adsorption
mechanism of MB using FWB based AC follows pseudo second order while both Langmuir and
Freundlich model well fitted the adsorption data with maximum removal efficiency of 94.2% and
adsorption capacity of 22.39 mg g
-1
. FWB can be a good precursor for AC production and can be
used to remove MB from wastewater.
Description
Keywords
Activated carbon, Flower waste biomass, Chemical activation, Surface area, Adsorption