Background and objective: Dyes and pigments have been used in many industries for coloration purpose but they pose hazards to environment and end users of water. Therefore, it is important to remove these pollutants from wastewater before their final disposal. This work aimed to investigate the removal of amaranth dye by cost effective, eco-friendly, highly efficient adsorbents such as egg shell powder and environmental friendly biosorbent.
Materials and methods: The adsorption of anionic amaranth dye by egg shell powder was carried out by varying different parameters which include contact time, pH, adsorbent dosage and temperature to study their potential in adsorption of adsorbent.
Results: The results obtained that optimal adsorption of dye was noticed at pH 4 (98.32%), temperature 60°C (96.30%) with 6 g of egg shell powder (97.61%) and has saturation point at 300 ppm after which desorption of dye occurs. The adsorption process was analyzed by the Langmuir, Freundlich and Temkin isotherm models. The adsorption of amaranth was best represented by Freundlich model.
Conclusion: Egg shell powder is eco friendly bio adsorbent and it can be used for amaranth dye removal.
Keywords: Dye; absorption kinetics; adsorption; amaranth; eggshell; wastewater.