Kinetic and equilibrium studies of methylene blue biosorption by Posidonia oceanica (L.) fibres

Batch biosorption experiments were carried out for the removal of methylene blue, a basic dye, from aqueous solution using raw Posidonia oceanica (L.) fibres, a marine lignocellulosic biomass. A series of assays were undertaken to assess the effect of the system variables, i.e. contact time, solution pH, biosorbent dosage and initial dye concentration. The results had showed that biosorption capacity was optimal using 6-9 solution pH range and by increasing the biosorbent concentration up to 1 g/L. The biosorption kinetics were analyzed using irreversible-first-order, reversible-first-order and pseudo-second-order and the sorption data were very well described by the pseudo-second-order model for the entire adsorption time with squared correlation coefficients equal to unity for all experimented initial dye concentrations. Besides, equilibrium data were very well represented by both Langmuir and Redlich-Peterson isotherm models followed by Freundlich, which confirm the monolayer coverage of methylene blue molecules onto P. oceanica fibres.