Adsorption of methylene blue by banana stem adsorbent in a continuous fixed bed column study

Abstract

Methylene Blue is a cationic dye that releases aromatic amines in many textile industries and can cause potential harm to human health. Agricultural waste has been explored for their adsorption abilities towards Methylene Blue dye from textile wastewater. This study described the performance of fixed-bed column using banana stem as filter media under the effect of various bed height (10, 30, 50 cm) and initial concentration of Methylene Blue (0.02 and 0.03 mg/L) to assess the breakthrough curve. From the fixed-bed column study, the column with initial Methylene Blue concentration of 0.02 mg/L and bed height of 50cm performed well in removing Methylene Blue from the synthetic Methylene Blue solution. The breakthrough time and exhaustion time were 953.57 minutes and 4560 minutes, respectively. As a conclusion, banana stem filter media is an effective alternative in removing Methylene Blue from textile wastewater.