Removal of Methylene Blue Dye from Textile Wastewater using Activated Carbon

Copyright © 2014 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT: Textile industry is one of those industries that consume large amounts of water during the manufacturing process and, also, discharge great amounts of effluents with synthetic dyes to the environment causing public concern. Azo dyes are applied in textile industries, are considered to be serious health-risk factors. Several physico-chemical and biological methods for dye removal from wastewater have been investigated in the last decades. But, these treatment techniques need posterior separation process which significantly affects the economic performance of the plant. On the other hand, adsorption is one of the efficient methods and needs low capital and operational costs. Thus, this study investigates the potential use of low cost activated carbon prepared from the rice husk for the removal of Methylene Blue wastes. The rice husk was collected form rice mill and washed repeatedly until the dirty was eliminated. Then, it was heated at 500 o C for 30 min and the activated carbon had been activated with H2SO4 in order to make the carbon porous. A batch experiments were carried out in order to investigate the effect of various parameters. Uv-visibile spectrometer was used for the analysis of final concentration of the effluent. Experimental results have shown that, the amount of dye adsorption increased wit