Removal of methylene blue using activated carbon from foxtail palm fruits

Many industries are commonly known for using dyes. The disposed dyes can lead to serious harm to the water users and life in the aquatic because of the dye properties. Industry of textile is the major dye wastewater source which lead to serious pollution in the environment. Hence, the dye adsorption by activated carbon prepared from foxtail fruit palm was studied. The objective of this study were to prepare activated carbon from foxtail fruit palm and to study the effect of contact time, adsorbent dosage and initial concentration of dye usage toward the efficiency of the prepared activated carbon. Nitric acid was used as activating agent in this experiment, with impregnation time of overnight and 500 ˚C of 2.5 hours carbonization. The adsorption capability of foxtail fruit palm activated carbon was determined with the use of a dye called methylene blue. The methylene blue adsorption was identified based on a range of parameters including the contact time, adsorbent dose and initial dye concentration in order to investigate their effects in adsorption potential of foxtail fruit palm powder. This study indicates that activated carbon from foxtail palm fruits could be utilised as a low cost adsorbent to remove basic dyes by using commercialized activated carbon especially to treat wastewater. The results showed the methylene blue removal rate were at 150 mins (85.96%), 5g and 2mg/L (97.13%).The results were obtained.