An eco-friendly non-conventional adsorbent from silk cotton fiber for the removal of methylene blue dye

Abstract

Highly porous activated carbon fiber with excellent surface area has been prepared using silk cotton fiber as a precursor. The Activated Silk Cotton Fiber (ASC) has well developed porosity with rose flower like structure. The BET surface area of the prepared adsorbent is 1041.08 m²/g with a total pore volume of 0.4944 cm³/g. The adsorption capability of the prepared adsorbent ASC has been analyzed using methylene blue (MB) dye. The effect of pH indicates that ASC has its maximum adsorption at a pH of 10. On analyzing the kinetics of MB adsorption, the pseudo-second order kinetic model describes the adsorption with good r² value of 0.9895 < r² < 0.9997. The maximum Langmuir monolayer adsorption capacity is found to be 80.65 mg/g at 45°C. The experimental results and the thermodynamic studies prove the physisorption nature of MB adsorption onto ASC.