Equilibrium, kinetics, mechanism, and process design for the sorption of methylene blue onto rice husk

Batch experiments were carried out for the sorption of methylene blue onto rice husk particles. The operating variables studied were initial solution pH, initial dye concentration, adsorbent concentration, and contact time. Equilibrium data were fitted to the Freundlich and Langmuir isotherm equations and the equilibrium data were found to be well represented by the Langmuir isotherm equation. The monolayer sorption capacity of rice husks for methylene blue sorption was found to be 40.5833 mg/g at room temperature (32 °C). The sorption was analyzed using pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second-order kinetic models and the sorption kinetics was found to follow a pseudo-second-order kinetic model. Also the applicability of pseudo second order in modeling the kinetic data was also discussed. The sorption process was found to be controlled by both surface and pore diffusion with surface diffusion at the earlier stages followed by pore diffusion at the later stages. The average external mass transfer coefficient and intraparticle diffusion coefficient was found to be 0.01133 min−1 and 0.695358 mg/g min0.5. Analysis of sorption data using a Boyd plot confirms that external mass transfer is the rate limiting step in the sorption process. The effective diffusion coefficient, Di was calculated using the Boyd constant and was found to be 5.05×10−04cm2/s for an initial dye concentration of 50 mg/L. A single-stage batch-adsorber design of the adsorption of methylene blue onto rice husk has been studied based on the Langmuir isotherm equation.