Efficiency of foxtail palm fruit activated carbon in malachite green dye removal

The release of dye into the environment have adverse effect on human life, plants and animals. There were various technologies used to effectively remove the dye from water to reduce pollution such as adsorption. Utilization of agriculture biomass such as foxtail fruit had been found as interesting alternative based on its potential in activated carbon adsorption. In this study, activated carbon was prepared from the carbonization (300°C, 2 hours) of foxtail fruit (wodyetia bifurcate) impregnated with HNO3. Batch adsorption experiment was conducted by using incubator shaker to investigate the effect of contact time, adsorbent dosage and dye concentration for the adsorption of MG dye from aqueous solution. The absorbance of the MG dye (treated solution) had been analyzed by UV-Vis spectrophotometer to find the optimal condition for the efficiency of foxtail fruit activated carbon to treat MG dye in aqueous solution. Resulting from the parameter with the highest percentage removal was chosen for subsequent studies. This method can be considered as time and cost effective as foxtail fruit was easily access. Apart from the results, the optimization of the maximum removal of MG by foxtail fruit activated carbon was determined. The optimal adsorption at highest percentage removal, 97.83%, is obtained when using 1g of activated carbon, 60 minutes of contact time and 10 mg/L of dye concentration of malachite green.