Garments plays a vital role among the basic needs of human life, hence there are lots of demand and production of dyestuffs every year to colour the fabrics. In the dyeing process 10 to 20% of the dyes are wasted as effluent. Dye laden wastewater is treated by biological or chemical treatment which is found to be inadequate and expensive. In this study, an attempt has been made to prepare an activated carbon from agro-waste based material, Corn Cobs which are abundantly available in Tamil Nadu. Base activation of Corn Cobs was done with ZnCl2 solution for 12 hours and carbonized at 350º C for 2 hours. A kinetic experimental study was carried out for Congo red dye removal. In the preliminary studies both the Commercial Activated Carbon (CAC) and Corn Cobs Activated Carbon (CCAC) with various initial adsorbate concentration of 50, 65, 75, 100 and 125 ppm were considered. For further studies on the effect of various parameters such as the contact time and adsorbent dosage, initial concentration of adsorbate was chosen as 65 ppm. The other experimental parameters such as temperature and initial pH were kept at 27±0.5°C and 6.8±0.2 respectively. The experimental results of both CAC and CCAC were compared. The CCAC showed a removal of 97.8% at an adsorbent dosage of 1.2 g, whereas the CAC showed a removal of 98.1% at a dosage of 0.3 g. The result shows that CCAC has abundant potential for the removal of dye.
Adsorption of congo red dye from aqueous solutions by prepared activated carbon with oxygen-containing functional groups and its regeneration