Synthesis of Sulfonated Polystyrene-Based Porous Activated Carbon for Organic Dyes Removal from Aqueous Solutions

Abstract

Nowadays, aquatic pollution is one of the most important global challenges, due to discharges a wide variety of various hazardous materials from different activities which have significant environmental, economic and healthy impacts. Industries and activities related to organic dyes onsume large amounts of water and contribute significantly to the growing problem of water pollution. The current study describes the conversion of plant wastes into activated carbon sphere incorporated sulfonated polystyrene (AC/SPS) for adsorptive removal of Rhodamine B (RhB) and Congo Red (CR) dyes in a batch process. The prepared materials were characterized by different techniques such as XRD, FTIR, FESEM, TEM, BET-BJH, and TGA. The AC/SPS in weight ratio of 10% was used as a novel adsorbent for RhB and CR remediation. Batch adsorption experiment have been studied by investigating the effect of contact time, adsorbent dose, initial pH, and temperature. The maximum removal efficiency of RhB and CR onto AC/SPS under optimized conditions was estimated to be 34% and 98%, respectively. In addition, it has been found that Freundlich model provided the most appropriate fit for the adsorption of both RhB and CR dyes. Based on the thermodynamic study, it was proven that the adsorption process for both dyes is endothermic and spontaneous. The change in entropy was estimated to be 190.59 and 65.40 J/mol K for CR and RhB dyes, respectively. The kinetic study revealed that the adsorption of CR and RhB dyes followed the pseudo-second order and pseudo-first order kinetic models, respectively.Graphical Abstract