Removal of metanil yellow from aqueous solution using kenaf core fibre as biosorbent

Kenaf is a precious fibre plant of the Hibiscus cannabinus family that has many uses in the agricultural industry. Meanwhile, kenaf producing agriculture waste which have little economic value that can be recommended as biosorbent which has ability to remove contaminants from wastewater through adsorption. The main aim of this research is to investigate the efficiency of adsorption process by using kenaf core fibre as biosorbent to remove Metanil yellow dye from aqueous solution. The characteristic of kenaf core fibre was studied using FT-IR analysis. The parameters such as adsorbent dosage, particle size, initial dye concentration at different contact time and pH of dye solution was studied to verify the potential of kenaf core fibre as adsorbent. The results showed that 3 g of 0.125 mm adsorbent in 100 mg/L of Metanil yellow dye concentration for 24 hours at pH 2 was showed the highest percentage of dye removal. The results also showed that the equilibrium data were represented by Freundlich isotherm with correlation coefficients R2 = 0.9957. Furthermore, the maximum adsorption capacity was 0.0179 mg/g. The kinetic data were found to fit pseudo-second-order model equation as compared to pseudo-first-order model. The adsorption of Metanil yellow dye onto the kenaf core fibres was spontaneous.