Application of ZnO nanorods loaded on activated carbon for ultrasonic assisted dyes removal: Experimental design and derivative spectrophotometry method

A method based on application of ZnO nanorods loaded on activated carbon (ZnO-NRs-AC) for adsorption of Bromocresol Green (BCG) and Eosin Y (EY) accelerated by ultrasound was described. The present material was synthesized under ultrasound assisted wet-chemical method and subsequently was characterized by FE-SEM, TEM, BET and XRD analysis. The extent of contribution of conventional variables like pH (2.0-10.0), BCG concentration (4-20 mg L-1), EY concentration (3-23 mg L-1), adsorbent dosage (0.01-0.03 g), sonication time (1-5 min) and centrifuge time (2-6 min) as main and interaction part were investigated by central composite design under response surface methodology. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was adapted to experimental data and guide the best operational conditions mass by set at 6.0, 9 mg L-1, 10 mg L-1, 0.02 g, 4 and 4 min for pH, BCG concentration, EY concentration, adsorbent dosage, sonication and centrifuge time, respectively. At these specified conditions dye adsorption efficiency was higher than 99.5%. The suitability and well prediction of optimum point was tested by conducting five experiments and respective results revel that RSD% was lower than 3% and high quality of fitting was confirmed by t-test. The experimental data were best fitted in Langmuir isotherm equation and the removal followed pseudo second order kinetics. The experimentally obtained maximum adsorption capacities were estimated as 57.80 and 61.73 mg g(-1) of ZnO-NRs-AC for BCG and EY respectively from binary dye solutions. The mechanism of removal was explained by boundary layer diffusion via intraparticle diffusion. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.