Mechanism and Kinetic Studies of Methylene Blue Adsorption on Commercial Polyurethane Foam

Abstract

Separation of several organic dyes and trace elements from aqueous effluents have a great importance in many areas of research today. Therefore, the main objective of this work was to remove methylene blue (MB) dye from effluents by using cost effective and environmentally method like adsorption.  To achieve this work, batch experiments were carried out with an artificial effluent comprising of MB dye in deionised water. The effects of the initial dye concentration, volume, PH value, stability and removal kinetics were studied. An adsorbent dosage of 0.5 g/L was effective in height removal percent of the dye ion, at pH 12.6, and equilibrium time 20-25 minutes. Also, the kinetic process of MB adsorption onto polyurethane foam (PUF) was investigated by applying Lagergen pseudo-first-order and Morris-Weber models to correlate the experimental data and to estimate the kinetic parameters. The adsorption isotherm data were correlated by the Langmuir and Freundlich models. A maximum monolayer adsorption capacity of 0.0929 mg/g was calculated using the Langmuir adsorption isotherm, suggesting a functional group limited adsorption process. The results confirmed that foam are effective sorbent for the removal of dye from effluent