PREPARATION OF ACTIVATED CARBON FROM MUSTARD SEED AND ITS ADSORPTION EFFICIENCY TOWARDS DYE AND ACID

Abstract

In this work, activated carbon obtained from agro- based material, mustard seeds were used as an adsorbent for the adsorption study of crystal violet (CV) and citric acid (CA). The characterization of synthesised carbon material was performed by various techniques, such as FTIR, SEM, TGA and XRD. FTIR absorption bands of activated carbon exhibited the presence of functional groups on the surface of activated carbon and SEM images showed the impregnation of the pores on the surface of the synthesised activated carbon. Adsorption experiments were conducted to study its capacity as an adsorbent, under various conditions such as concentration, agitation time and temperature. The data acquired from concentration variation found to fit well with Freundlich isotherm. It was shown that the adsorption of dye and acid were better described by the second order kinetic model. Positive values of ΔHo indicated that the process is endothermic and negative values of ΔGo confirmed feasibility of the system. The results showed that microwave activated carbon was more effective for the removal of crystal violet.