Removal of malachite green from aqueous solution by using pineapple peel

Abstract

This study investigates the potential of pineapple peel (PP) as a low cost agricultural adsorbent in the removal of malachite green (MG) from aqueous solution. The potential of PP as an adsorbent was proven by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The adsorption process was conducted in a batch experiment for different parameters such as initial of dye concentration, adsorbent dosage and contact time. The experiment showed that the amount of dye adsorbed was highest at 3.92 mg/g for 100 mg/L MG concentration. The amount of dye adsorbed was found to increase with increase in initial dye concentration. Besides, the experimental results showed that 0.5 g of PP was capable to remove 95.25% of MG dye as the percentage removal of MG dye were increase with the increase in adsorbent dosage. The optimum contact time was 180 minutes which give the highest percentage of MG dye removal of 88.02%. The effect of contact time showed that the percentage of dye removal increase with the increase in contact time. Furthermore, the adsorption kinetic was well described by pseudo-second order with a good correlation factor R2 of 0.9981. Moreover, Langmuir isotherm model is best described the adsorption of MG dye onto PP compared to Freundlich isotherms since the R2 value is 0.9909. This study indicate that the PP can be an alternative adsorbent for the removal of MG from aqueous solutions.