Removal of Methylene Blue Dye from Aqueous Solution Using De-Oiled Rice Bran as Adsorbent

Abstract

Dyes are widely used in many industries, mainly in the textile industries. The effluents containing these dyes are an environmental concern and the disposal of these wastes into receiving water causes damage to the environment and may also be toxic to aquatic life. It is therefore imperative to treat textile effluents thanks to their toxic and aesthetic impacts on the receiving water bodies. Removal of dyes from wastewater using adsorption process has become one of the most effective and comparable low-cost methods for the decolorization of textile wastewater. Adsorption by using activated charcoal may be a very effective process, but the high cost of such adsorbents has motivated the look for alternatives and low-cost adsorbents. Agricultural waste is an alternate use for wastewater treatment because they're cheap, simple, sludge free and involve small initial cost and investment This work explores the feasibility of De-Oiled rice bran, a solid waste, for the absorption of methylene blue (MB). Batch adsorption studies were conducted to evaluate the effects of adsorbent dosage (0.5-2.5 g/L), initial pH (2-10), initial concentration (5-25 mg/L), and time (0-120 min.). A central composite design technique for the design of experiments was used for the adsorption using carbonaceous catalyst prepared from rice bran. The optimum conditions were achieved at 1.5 g/L of adsorbent dosage, pH 6, 15 mg/L initial dye concentration in 60 minutes, with adsorption removal of 93.7%. The results revealed that De-oiled Rice Bran is potentially low-cost adsorbent for adsorption of Methylene Blue.