Application of nanoporous material MCM-41 in a membrane adsorption reactor (MAR) as a hybrid process for removal of methyl orange

Abstract

The hybrid systems have been proven to be the most efficient technology for quickly lowering the concentration of dissolved pollutants in an effluent. In this work, the hybrid process was applied for adsorption of Methyl Orange (MO) dye pollutant from simulated wastewater by using mesoporous MCM-41 as an efficient adsorbents coupling with a microfiltration membrane (MF) in a membrane adsorption reactor (MAR) system. Batch adsorption process has been achieved to investigate the effect of various parameters, such as; adsorbent dose, initial adsorbate concentration and contact time. The equilibrium adsorption data of MO onto MCM-41 were analyzed by Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption isotherms. Adsorption of MO by mesoporous material MCM-41 arrived at equilibrium in 20 min, and the system obeyed Langmuir isotherm model (qmax = 151.51 mg/g), which is appropriate to monolayer adsorption. The kinetic pseudo-second order model appeared to match empirical datum completely. As for the hybrid process system (Mesoporous-MCM-41-MAR), the adsorption efficacy of MO and flux was 99% and 0.0006 ml/mm2 min respectively, which was generally due to contribution of both systems at the same time, adsorption by mesoporous MCM-41 and filtration by membrane system. The hybrid process not only removed MO with high efficacy, but also actively separated and recycled mesoporous MCM-41.