Acid Treatment on Bentonite Clay for the Removal of Fast Green FCF Dye from Aqueous Solution

The bentonite clay has been activated by acid treatment and utilized as a lower-cost and eco-friendly adsorbent required to remove Fast Green FCF dye from the aqueous solution. At first acid activated bentonite clay minerals were analyzed by various analytical techniques like Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), x-ray diffraction (XRD), and x-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis. The batch adsorption research was performed to investigate the Fast Green FCF dye adsorption onto the acid-treated (Bent) bentonite clay. Sorption studies investigated the impacts of adsorbent dosage, initial pH, and time of contact on Fast Green FCF color elimination. The adsorption capacity decreased as the pH was above 7 and then remained almost the same after a pH value of 9. At acidic conditions (below pH value 7), the capacity of adsorption diminished by a decrease in the pH of the solution. The results indicated that the maximum capacity of adsorption has been obtained at an adsorbent dosage of 0.1 g. As the dosage of the adsorbent was improved, several active sites that were available at the time of the dye adsorption increased. As a result, the dye percentage that was removed from the clay increased. Besides these, adsorption kinetics, adsorption equilibrium isotherm, and thermodynamics studies have been also conducted. While studying the adsorption kinetics pseudo-2nd-order kinetics has been seen to be more appropriate as compared to pseudo-1st-order model. The experimental findings indicated that the attachment of the dye to the clay surface followed the “Langmuir adsorption” isotherm rather than the Freundlich adsorption isotherm with a monolayer coverage of 18.93 mg/g. From the thermodynamics study, it was revealed that the process of adsorption takes place instantly at high temperatures.