Removal of an Organic Dye by Adsorption on Hybrid Material

Abstract

This study investigated the removal of Orange-G dye (OG) using a hybrid adsorbent developed from Opuntia Ficus Indica (OFI) activated with NaOH (OFI-A) were reinforced by polyaniline (PANI) by a fast chemical method. PANI@OFI-A and OFI-A adsorbents having different physicochemical characteristics as FTIR, XRD, TGA, SEM and nitrogen adsorption isotherms are used to analyze the structure of the resulting materials. Besides, the effect of several parameters including contact time (0–24 h), pH (1–12) and initial OG concentration (300–1000 mg.L−1) were evaluated on the adsorption efficiency. The modified OFI-A by PANI was employed as an excellent adsorbent for the removing of OG from aqueous solutions. The results indicated that OG adsorption basically relies on adsorbing time, solution pH and initial OG concentration. Furthermore, the PANI@OFI-A also shows a high adsorption capacity of 303.94 mg.g−1 for OG, quite higher than that of OFI-A (8.04 mg.g−1) and PANI (271.52 mg.g-1). The kinetic results were adapted well to the pseudo second order kinetic model for three samples prepared. Based on the obtained results, the PANI@OFI-A has potential to be used in sensitive environment that need to completely remove OG.