| Abstrakt: |
Domestic, industrial, and agricultural human activities have contaminated water with undesirable pollutants; hence, the developments of cost-effective and efficient methods for remediating polluted water are important objectives. To address this issue, we used three agri-food byproducts (peanut pericarp, almond endocarp, and pistachio endocarp), which are abundant and unexploited Algerian lignocellulosic waste products, as low-cost biosorbents to remove methylene blue (MB), a model dye pollutant, from aqueous solutions. The biosorbents were characterized using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and differential scanning calorimet ry (DSC). The adsorption capacities of the biosorbents were studied as functions of the initial MB concentration. Peanut pericarp was found to be a good adsorbent for methylene blue, with a maximum adsorption capacity qmax (determined from the Langmuir isotherm) of 60.97 mgg-1, followed by almond endocarp and pistachio endocarp with qmax values of 30.76 and 20.83 mgg-1, respectively. However, almond endocarp, which had a KF value of 6.02 mgg-1 determined from the Freundlich isotherm, exhibited the highest adsorption capacity compared to peanut pericarp and pistachio endocarp (1.86 and 1.81 mgg-1, respectively). Moreover, the adsorption isotherms also revealed that the MB biosorption equilibrium performance is best described by the Langmuir model rather than the Freundlich model, with coefficients of determination (R²) exceeding 0.95. These results clearly demonstrate that the studied byproducts are promising biomaterials that can be used as effective biosorbents for the removal of MB dye in effluents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
