Comparison study on the removal of cationic dyes from aqueous suspension of maghnia montmorillonite

Abstract

The ability of sodium-exchanged clay particles as an adsorbent for the removal of commercial dyes, Methylene blue (MB) and Malachite green oxalate (MG) from aqueous solutions has been investigated under various experimental conditions. The effect of the experimental parameters, such as pH solution, agitation time, adsorbate concentration and adsorbent dose were examined. Maximum adsorption of dyes, i.e. >90% has been achieved in aqueous solutions using 0.03 g of clay at a pH of 7 and 298 K for both dyes. The adsorption process was a fast and the equilibrium was obtained within the first 5 min. For the adsorption of both MB and MG dyes, the pseudo-second-order reaction kinetics provides the best correlation of the experimental data. The adsorption equilibrium results follow Langmuir and Dubini-Radushkevich (D-R) isotherms with high regression coefficients R2 > 0.98. The mean free energies Ea of adsorption from D-R model were 3.779 and 2.564 kj/mol for MB and MG respectively, which corresponds to a physisorption process.