Effect of dispersed hydrophilic silicon dioxide nanoparticles on batch adsorption of benzoic acid from aqueous solution using modified natural vermiculite: An equilibrium study

The equilibrium adsorption of benzoic acid from an aqueous medium on a natural vermiculite-based adsorbent was studied in the presence and absence of hydrophilic silicon dioxide nanoparticles in batchwise mode. The adsorbent was prepared through grinding natural vermiculite in a laboratory vibratory disk mill and the surfactant modification of ground vermiculite by cetyltrimethylammonium bromide, subsequently. The equilibrium isotherm in the presence and absence of nanoparticles was experimentally obtained and the equilibrium data were fitted to the Langmuir, Freundlich, Dubinin-Radushkevich and Temkin models. The results indicated that the dispersion of silicon dioxide nanoparticles at optimum concentration in the liquid phase remarkably increases the removal efficiency. Furthermore, it yields a more favorable equilibrium isotherm and changes the compatibility of equilibrium data from the Langmuir and Temkin equations to just the Langmuir equation. A quadratic polynomial model predicting the equilibrium adsorbent capacity in the presence of nanoparticles as a function of the adsorbate and initial nanoparticle concentrations was successfully developed using the response surface methodology based on the rotatable central composite design. A desirability function was used in order to optimize the values of all variables, independent and dependent ones, simultaneously.