Synergistic extractant for extraction of remazol orange 3R in liquid membrane formulation

Abstract

Currently, various synthetic dyes are used in the textile industry and a lot of non-bonded dyes are released into the wastewater; increasing its toxicity and carcinogenicity. Liquid membrane process is one of the potential methods to eliminate these unwanted particles from the wastewater. The most crucial part of the liquid membrane process is its formulation; especially the extractant or carrier. In order to find a suitable extractant, liquid-liquid extraction process was carried out. The effect of synergistic extractant to extract the Remazol Orange 3R reactive dyes in a shorter time and at a lower concentration of extractant was investigated in this study. Several parameters have been studied such as extractant type, extractant concentration, synergist extractant type and synergist extractant concentration. The results show that, Remazol Orange 3R reactive dyes were extracted by tridodecylamine (TDA) as a base and trioctylamine (TOA) as a synergist extractant. Meanwhile, the salicyclic acid (SA) was used to protonate the TDA and TOA, and cooking palm oil was used as a diluent. The performance of extraction of reactive dyes at the 0.1 M concentration of extractant was 70% when synergistic system was applied compared to single extractant which was only 50% of the dyes have been extracted. Therefore, the synergistic extractant has a potential to be further utilised in liquid membrane studies on the extraction of reactive dyes.