Activated carbon as dye adsorbent - Optimization

What is it about?

Activated carbon (AC) is a highly porous material that shows excellent performance in adsorption process. It is widely applied in industry for separation of heavy metal, dyes, and organic residues from water and wastewater. This study investigates the use of an innovative method incorporating microwave-assisted pyrolysis and chemical activation with alkali metal hydroxides to produce activated carbon from orange peel. The method was examined for its performance over a range of process parameters (i.e. microwave power, microwave irradiation time and chemical impregnation ratio) with emphasis on the process features, the yield and composition of the AC obtained, and its adsorption of malachite green (a common dye that produces the wastewater in textile industry). This was followed by optimization of the process parameters using response surface methodology (RSM) adopting central composite design (CCD) to maximize the yield of AC with optimal adsorption efficiency on malachite green dye. These evaluations are important to assess the feasibility of developing an improved method that is energy-efficient and requires a shorter process time to recycle orange peel, while simultaneously producing a higher yield of AC with better quality and which can be use as dye adsorbent to treat wastewater in textile industry.

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Why is it important?

Our results demonstrated that microwave-assisted pyrolysis coupled with chemical activation shows exceptional promise as a fast and energy efficient method to convert orange peel to produce activated carbon with improved properties desirable for use as a dye adsorbent to treat wastewater in textile industry. It was also suggested that the microwave-assisted pyrolysis method could be an economically viable approach to produce activated carbon, hence the pyrolysis operation could be scaled up for commercial applications.