Removal of methyl red using activated carbon prepared from Parkia Speciosa Pod (petai) as a low cost adsorbent

Textile industry is one of the major contributors either in terms of employment or economies. This industry has provided us with variety of daily necessity such as sources of yarn, clothing and the distribution. Extensively use of dyes in this textile industry has created pollutions to occur especially water pollution. The serious problem of this pollution is when the daily water usage, is from the untreated effluents which are discharged directly into water bodies. However, the disposed dyes into environment can be treated with several methods of dyes removal. Due to that, a study was conducted to investigate the capability of adsorbent from agricultural waste to remove methyl red dyes. In this study, Parkia speciosa pods were chosen as the raw material from agricultural waste to produce activated carbon. Three kinds of parameters were studied; best adsorbent with chemicals impregnation and carbonization time, contact time and initial dye concentration. From the result, 100% of methyl red was removed by the activated carbon impregnated with zinc chloride solution of 1 hour carbonization time. The optimum time and initial concentration of dye was 30 minutes and 10 ppm respectively with the percentage removal of 100%. Thus, this result can contribute some knowledge on the use of low cost adsorbent from agricultural waste impregnation with specified chemicals in treating textile industrial wastewater.