Silica gels from coal fly ash as methylene blue adsorbent: Isotherm and kinetic studies

Abstract

A lot of dye pollutants were released in the aquatic environment as waste from industrial coloring process. This research aimed to study silica gels (SG) as a potential adsorbent to remove the dyes. The SG can be synthesized from coal fly ash (FA), which is industrial solid waste rarely utilized, using the sol-gel method. Its properties were then characterized by FTIR, XRD, SEM, and isothermal ads-des N2. As a result, FTIR spectra and XRD diffractogram exhibited the successfully SG synthesized from FA with the amorphous structure. The image analysis using SEM demonstrated that SG particles are spherical. The isotherm type, based on isotherm ads-des N2, is type II without hysteresis loop which represents the nonporous material SG with the surface area and pore diameter of 25.977 m2/g and 1.52 nm, respectively. The adsorption capacity performance of SG to remove methylene blue (MB) as a basic dye is 62.70 % which is higher than FA, following Langmuir isotherm adsorption model. The kinetics of adsorption rate of SG are based on the pseudo second order models accelerated by 3.37 times faster than FA.