Modified coal fly ash for textile dye removal from industrial wastewater

Abstract

Complex dyes have an adverse impact on the environment since they have a high aqueous solubility and are very challenging to be removed using conventional approaches. A series of batch tests were performed to determine the optimum parameters for the direct blue 78 dye adsorption process as a function of chemically treated coal fly ash (TCFA) Effect of fly ash dose, contact time and dye initial concentration were studied using an industrial wastewater. A pilot plant, consisting of three stages; mixing, sedimentation and filtration was designed and implemented to investigate the ability of TCFA to remove COD, BOD₅, TDS and TSS from textile wastewater under optimal conditions. A series of fly ash physico-chemical analysis including particles size analysis, zeta potential, XRD, EDX, BET, SEM and FTIR were investigated. The results showed that the particles size and zeta potential for raw coal fly ash were 1.2 µm and −20.70 mv. Chemical treatment process using hydrochloric acid resulted reducing the particles size of fly ash from 1.2 µm to 0.95 µm. Zeta potential value increased to + 7.20 mv. Batch adsorption process showed that the removal efficiency decreased as the primary dye concentration increased. It increased when fly ash loading and contact time increased. Dyes removal was achieved up to 99.7% using TCFA loading 3gL⁻¹ for initial dye concentration10 mgL⁻¹. Studies on equilibrium revealed that the equilibrium data was closely fitted to the Freundlich and Langmuir isotherm models. Kinetic study of adsorption process was studied in detial. Based on high correlation coefficient (R² = 0.999), the results were followed pseudo second-order model.