Ultrasonically assisted hydrothermal synthesis of activated carbon–HKUST-1-MOF hybrid for efficient simultaneous ultrasound-assisted removal of ternary organic dyes and antibacterial investigation: Taguchi optimization

• Ultrasonically assisted hydrothermal synthesis of activated carbon–HKUST-1-MOF hybrid.
• Combined ultrasound-assisted/AC–HKUST-1 MOF adsorption as a new dye removal method. Using of AC–HKUST-1-MOF hybrid for in vitro antibacterial actively against (MRSA) and (PAO1) bacteria.
• A Taguchi design was used for optimize the parameters.
• We demonstrate a metrology for fast simultaneous removal of dyes from aqueous solution. Ultrasound shows considerable advantages on the synthesis of AC–HKUST-1-MOF hybrid and removal yield of dyes.

Activated carbon (AC) composite with HKUST-1 metal organic framework (AC–HKUST-1 MOF) was prepared by ultrasonically assisted hydrothermal method and characterized by FTIR, SEM and XRD analysis and laterally was applied for the simultaneous ultrasound-assisted removal of crystal violet (CV), disulfine blue (DSB) and quinoline yellow (QY) dyes in their ternary solution. In addition, this material, was screened in vitro for their antibacterial actively against Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PAO1) bacteria. In dyes removal process, the effects of important variables such as initial concentration of dyes, adsorbent mass, pH and sonication time on adsorption process optimized by Taguchi approach. Optimum values of 4, 0.02 g, 4 min, 10 mg L−1 were obtained for pH, AC–HKUST-1 MOF mass, sonication time and the concentration of each dye, respectively. At the optimized condition, the removal percentages of CV, DSB and QY were found to be 99.76%, 91.10%, and 90.75%, respectively, with desirability of 0.989. Kinetics of adsorption processes follow pseudo-second-order model. The Langmuir model as best method with high applicability for representation of experimental data, while maximum mono layer adsorption capacity for CV, DSB and QY on AC–HKUST-1 estimated to be 133.33, 129.87 and 65.37 mg g−1 which significantly were higher than HKUST-1 as sole material with Qm to equate 59.45, 57.14 and 38.80 mg g−1, respectively.