Sugarcane bagasse and its potential use for the textile effluent treatment

In Colombia, sugarcane represents the second product with a large area of cultivation. It is estimated that from sugar mills about 6 million tons of sugarcane bagasse, SCB, are produced, of which 5 million are inefficiently used for burning boilers. SCB is mainly composed of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, allowing its use as a potential adsorbent. Particularly, the aim of this work was to evaluate the viability of using SCB for the adsorption of basic red 46, BR46, in aqueous solution. The effect of factors such as point of zero charge, solution pH, particle size, adsorbent dosage, initial dye concentration, contact time and ionic strength was evaluated using a statistical design of experiments. A removal of 86.4 % was obtained and the further optimization of the process through a response surface design, allowed to achieve a maximum adsorption of 95.0 %. These results suggest SCB is a promising alternative of a non-conventional adsorbent that could be applied for treating dyed effluents