UTILIZATION OF WATER HYACINTH FOR DYE EFFLUENT PURIFICATION

Abstract

Water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) (WH) is an invasive plant floating freely on the water, which is widely spread in tropical and subtropical regions. The plant is characterized by high porosity and a high number of functional groups, such as hydroxyl (-OH), carboxyl (–COOH), and amino groups (–NH2). Activated carbon, which is widely accepted on an industrial level for the adsorption of dyes from wastewaters, is a highly expensive material. Thus, in this research, a bioadsorbent material was prepared based on WH biomass and investigated as an alternative tool for water quality remediation, in the case of dye pollutants (RR HE3B). The WH plants were collected from the nearby Lake Tana and used as an adsorbent material without chemical treatment. The batch adsorption test was performed by varying the pH of the solution, adsorbent dosage and initial dye concentration. The powdered WH and RR HE3B dye loaded WH were characterized using FTIR, revealing the emergence of new stretching vibration peaks in the range from 2800 to 3000 cm-1 on the spectrum of Reactive Red HE3B (RR HE3B) dye loaded WH, confirming that -CH and -CH2 were responsible for the adsorption. The analysis of the adsorption isotherm and of the suitability of different models for describing it has led to the following order: Freundlich > Langmuir > Temkin > Dubinin-Radushkevich, based on their correlation coefficient value. This implies that the WH adsorbent surface is heterogeneous and the adsorption of the dye onto it depends not only on the specific reaction sites, as the n-value of the Freundlich constant confirms that the physical adsorption process might be favored. Therefore, WH could be a potential alternative adsorbent to remove the RR HE3B dye from dye polluted wastewaters.