Camel Thorn as an Eco-Friendly Biosorbent for Removal of Reactive Dye from Textile Waste Water

The use of cheap, high efficiency and eco-friendly bio sorbent has been studied as an alternative source of activated carbon for the removal of dyes from wastewater. The bio sorption of Methyl Orange (MO) dye from aqueous solution on Camel thorn plant as a local low-cost, available and renewable biological adsorbent was studied. Activated carbon were prepared from camel thorn by chemical activation with 28% H3PO4 followed by pyrolysis at 150°C. Spectrophotometric technique was used for the measurement of concentration of dye before and after adsorption. The effect of various experimental parameters such as contact time, temperature, initial dye concentration and dose of adsorbent were studied. The results showed that the bio sorption of MO as the amount of adsorbent increased, the percentage of dye removal increased accordingly but it decreased with the increase in initial dye concentration and solution temperature. Effect of temperature onto percentage of dye removal shown that the exothermic spontaneity of the bio sorption process .Maximum dye removal was observed at initial dye concentration 20 mgL-1 ,dose of adsorbent 1.5 g and contact time 120 min at temperature room. Adsorption kinetic data were tested using pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second-order models. Kinetic studies showed that the bio sorption followed pseudo-second-order kinetic model with high degree of correlation coefficients (R2 > 0.99). Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms were used to analyze the equilibrium data at different temperatures ranging (20-40°C) with the intervals of 5°C. The experimental data were more suitable to the Langmuir model than to the Freundlich model. The adsorption capacity maxi mom was calculated as 20.83 mg g-1 at 20°C .The experimental studies were indicated that camel thorn plant had the potential to act as an alternative bio sorbent to remove the MO dye from aqueous solution.