Adsorption of methyl violet dye onto a prepared bio-adsorbent from date seeds: isotherm, kinetics, and thermodynamic studies

Abstract

Raw date seeds, as prospective natural, broadly obtainable and low-price agricultural waste for adsorbing cationic dyes from aqueous solutions, have been studied. In this work, Iraqi date seeds were prepared and characterised using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area analysis before being used as an efficient bio-adsorbent for methyl violet (MV) dye removal. Adsorption tests were conducted with three investigated parameters, namely, time of contact, first adsorbate concentration and adsorbent dose. Compared with the pseudo first-order model (coefficient of determination = 0.9001), the pseudo second-order model was determined to be the best-fitting model with a coefficient of determination (R²) of 0.9917. The equilibrium isotherms for MV were obtained, and their ultimate capacity of adsorption was (59.5 mg g¹). Two isotherm models, Langmuir and Freundlich, were studied to fit the equilibrium data. Compared with the Freundlich isotherm model (R² = 0.8154), the Langmuir model functioned better as an adsorption isotherm with R² of 0.9837. In addition, the adsorption process was endothermic and spontaneous. The date seeds acted as active adsorbents to remove MV from the aqueous solutions in the model experiments.