Synthesis and characterization of Graphene Oxide-Ammonium Ferric Sulfate composite for the removal of dyes from tannery wastewater

Abstract

The leather processing industry is currently facing numerous environmental pollution challenges. Dyes are known as one of the most significant causes for water pollution. Thus, the present work is designed to tackle this issue via preparation of different composite comprising both graphene oxide and ammonium ferric sulfate, donated as GO-AFS. Results obtained via FTIR, TGA, XRD and SEM tools confirmed the facile preparation of GO-AFS composite having good thermal stability and exhibited rough and porous surface with no clear edges. The adsorption efficiency of the as-prepared GO-AFS composite was successfully examined against two commercial dyes, namely anionic dye Basic Black 7 (BB7) and cationic dye Acid Black 210 (AB210) together with specific tannery dye wastewater. The findings also ascertained that the color removal for BB7 was noticed to be mostly 100% within 2 min by GO-AFS adsorbent at 10 mg (0.1 g/L), while the color removal concentration at pH~7 was up to 700 ppm. In addition, the color removal performance of AB210 was also detected at approximately 100% by 12 mg (0.12 g/L) of GO-AFS within 3 min when the dye concentration at pH~4 was up to 400 ppm. Regarding the removal of real tannery dye from wastewater, it was also observed that the efficacy of GO-AFS as adsorbent reached 100%. Within the second cycle, the adsorption potential of recycled GO-AFS was restored by nearly 100% and this percentage decreased to 95.4% in the third cycle. In view of these findings, it can be concluded that the prepared GO-AFS composite can be considered as an excellent candidate for eradication of pollutants or contamination from tannery wastewater instead of the conventional high-cost adsorbents.