Activated Carbon Preparation from Groundnut Cake and Its Application for Congo Red Dye Removal

Abstract

The preparation of activated carbon by the activation of groundnut cake using sulphuric acid and its ability to remove the Congo Red (CR) dye from the aqueous solution in batch process were presented in this study. The effect of contact time, adsorbent dose, initial pH of the dye solution, temperature and initial dye concentration on the removal of CR dye were studied. The activated carbon was characterised by Iodine no., Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Fourier transform infra-red (FTIR) spectroscopy. Results showed that the activated carbon prepared has a good no. of active sites and pores for adsorption. Adsorption studies showed that adsorption was more effective in the acidic medium and increase with contact time, initial dye concentration adsorbent dosage and temperature. The adsorption capacity of the prepared groundnut cake activated carbon was 3.2 mg/g. The kinetic study of adsorption was better described by Pseudo-2nd order kinetic model and Freundlich isotherm describes the CR adsorption equilibrium data better than Langmuir isotherm