Utilization of macadamia seed husks as a low-cost sorbent for removing cationic dye (basic blue 3 dye) from aqueous solution

Abstract

This study examined the possibility of using Macadamia Seed Husks (MSH) as a low-cost sorbent for removal of recal- citrant Basic Blue 3 Dye (BB3). Batch adsorption experiments were performed to evaluate the capability of MSH in the removal of BB3 under varied experimental conditions. The percentage BB3 dye uptake surged with an increase in in- teraction time, MSH dosage, initial BB3 dye concentration, temperature and pH but significantly dropped with rise in particles size. The sorption equilibrium was attained within 40 min with adsorption efficacy of up to 99.8% at opti- mum pH 12. Experimental data obeyed the pseudo second order kinetic model with high regression coefficients (R2 > 0.9970) depicting domination of chemisorption. Freundlich adsorption isotherms gave a good fit to the experi- mental data with high regression coefficient values (R2 = 0.9991) suggesting multiple layer adsorption. The result proves that MSH can be a suitable and efficient alternative in the removal of synthetic dyes from industrial effluents.