Screening of Agricultural Waste as Potential Industrial Absorbent for Dye Removal

Effluent from textile industries is creating harmful effects on human being and aquatic ecosystem. Removal of synthetic dye from industrial effluent using low cost agricultural waste ispromising considering their economic values and eco-friendly nature. Every year, there are billion kilograms of agricultural waste such as oil palm empty fruit bunch fibers are produced in Malaysia. The present study was conducted to explore the potentiality of oil palm empty fruit bunch fiber (EFBF) as absorbent using various fiber sizes such as 75pm, 150pm and 425pm to formulate low cost industrial absorbent. Absorption method was applied for removing methylene blue (MB) and malachite green (MG) dyes from aqueous solution. The experiments were conducted in single absorbate system by batch techniques to determine the optimum condition for higher absorbency. Required concentration of dye solutions were prepared by dissolving distilled water. The optimum condition of the effect of absorption were carried out at different absorbent dosage (0.2g, 0.5g, 1.0g, 1.5g and 2g), temperature (25 °C, 40 °C, 55 °C and 70 °C) and pH (3.5, 6.5, 8.5 ), respectively. The study was then carried out according to treatments which were hot water treatment and acid treatment. The absorbent capacity of the treated EFBF was compared with untreated EFBF of above mentioned sizes to find out the best possible option. The result revealed that hot water treatment was found most effective followed by acid treatment and untreated EFBF for removing MB dyes. For MG, acid treated EFBF was most effective followed by hot water treatment and untreated EFBF. EFBF of 425pm size showed most removal efficacy compared to other sizes for both of the dyes. This study pointed out that empty fruit bunch fibre can be used as low cost effective industrial absorbent to remove MB and MG dyes from textile industries with modification.