Adsorption of reactive dyes and their mixtures on activated carbon. Kinetics, equilibrium and thermodynamic evaluation

The adsorption of three reactive dyes (Reactive Bezactiv Yellow (RBY), Reactive Bezactiv Blue (RBB) and Reactive Bezactiv (RBR)) on a commercially available activated carbon (CAC) has been evaluated. It was shown that CAC is capable to effectively remove these dyes from a solution. The adsorption increased with higher contact time, adsorbent dose, and initial dye concentration. The data indicated that the adsorption kinetics of dyes on CAC followed a pseudo-second order model. The adsorption isotherms followed the Langmuir isotherm model. Evaluation of thermodynamic parameters revealed that the adsorption process is endothermic for all dyes and spontaneous in a single system and became spontaneous in mixture systems at high temperature, expect RBY and RBB in the ternary mixture. Adsorption was higher for RBY, followed by RBB, and was lowest for RBR. The total adsorption efficiency was confirmed by chemical oxygen demand (COD) measurements.