Biosorption of Acid Dyes by Non-living Aquatic Macrophyte, Hydrilla verticillata

The aim of this research was to develop a low cost adsorbent for the acid dye wastewater treatment. The non-living aquatic macrophytes, Hydrilla verticillata has been investigated as a function of initial pH, contact time and initial concentrations. Adsorption kinetic and equilibrium tests were carried out in flasks under batch operations. Optimum decolorization was observed at pH 3.0 and the equilibrium state was achieved after 80 min. The pseudo-first-order and the pseudo-second-order kinetics were investigated for the biosorption system. Isotherm data can be described reasonably well with the Langmuir isotherm. In addition, Scanning electron microscope of pre-treated biomass shows that surface of the biomass with CaCl2 solution would remove the fine agglomerates and other surface impurities from the surface of biomass and Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analysis released that pre-treated biomass was significant difference in ion exchange as K+ and Cu2+ between un-treated biomass and pre-treated biomass. FTIR spectroscopy was employed to identify the chemical functional group present on the biomass. The characteristics bands of H. verticillata biomass are attributed to chemical bonds belonging to protein and polysaccharides functional groups. The experimental results in this study indicated that this low-cost biomaterial was an attractive candidate for the removal of acid dye from aqueous solutions at even low concentration.