ISOTHERMAL KINETIC AND THERMODYNAMIC STUDIES ON BASIC DYES SORPTION USING RICE HUSK CARBON

Dyes are usually present in trace quantities in the treated effluents of many industries. The present study investigates the potential use of pretreated rice husk and rice husk ash for the removal of methylene blue from wastewater. A series of batch experiments were carried out to determine the influence of different system variables such as PH, dye concentration, adsorbent dosage and temperature. The similar experiment was conducted with commercially available powdered activated carbon, in order to evaluate the performance of rice husk carbon. The adsorption capacity of both rice husk carbon and activated carbon has been tested for decolourization of waste water containing methylene blue. For equilibrium studies, two isotherm models were used which is Freundlich and Langmuir for different temperatures and it was found that both Freundlich and Langmuir, fitted in the experimental data very well. Thermodynamic studies showed that the adsorption of methylene blue from rice husk is exothermic and spontaneous in nature.