Removal of methylene blue by adsorption onto activated carbon developed from Ficus carica bast

Abstract

In this study, activated carbon was developed from Ficus carica bast (FCBAC). The experiments were carried out to explore methylene blue (MB) uptake by FCBAC. The influence of various experimental factors such as contact time, initial dye concentration, adsorbent dosage, temperature and pH of dye solution was investigated. The adsorption equilibrium was represented with Langmuir, Freundlich and Temkin isotherm models. Langmuir and Tempkin equations were found to have the correlation coefficient value in good agreement. Adsorption of MB onto FCBAC followed pseudo second order kinetics. The calculated values of ΔH°, ΔS° and ΔG° were found to be 21.55 kJ/mol, 76.24 J/mol K and −1.55 kJ/mol, respectably. Adsorption process was spontaneous and endothermic in nature.

Keywords

• Ficus carica bast
• Activated carbon
• Methylene blue
• Adsorption
• Isotherm
• Kinetics
• Thermodynamics