Adsorption of methylene blue dye from surface water onto aquifer material during batch experiments

The removal of Methylene Blue (MB) dye from the surface water during river bank filtration (RBF) was studied at 298 K in terms of its adsorption behavior. Aquifer material from the Srinagar RBF site, India was used as a representative of river bank media for the experiments. The textural properties of the aquifer material including surface area, mean pore area and total pore volume were examined from the low-temperature adsorption of nitrogen at 77 K. The conditions for maximum adsorption of the methylene blue dye on aquifer material were optimized. The removal efficiency of dye was obtained above 90% at initial concentration of 2 mg/L. From the kinetic study, the adsorption data followed the secondorder kinetic model (R2 =0.999). Equilibrium data were fitted to Langmuir, Freundlich, isotherms and the equilibrium data were best described by the Langmuir isotherm model (R2 =0.99). Thus from lab-scale results, RBF shows a significant barrier for dye transport.