Activated Carbon Adsorbent Using Desiccated Coconut Residue for Removing Methylene Blue Dye

Basic dye like methylene blue (MB) poses a serious threat to human and aquatic organisms. Activated carbon (AC) is one type of promising adsorbents utilized in the adsorption process to treat wastewater from various contaminants including dyes. Therefore, the objective of this study was to produce desiccated coconut residue-based activated carbon (DCRAC) by employing the microwave irradiation technique together with carbon dioxide, CO2 gasification, to treat MB dye from an aqueous solution. Activation power and time used were 440 W and 4 min respectively, which yielded DCRAC with Langmuir maximum single layer adsorption capacity, Qm of 256.41 mg/g. Batch equilibrium study disclosed that MB adsorption uptakes and MB removal increased from 20.98 to 185.55 mg/g, and decreased from 83.91 to 61.85%, respectively when MB starting concentration increased from 25 to 300 mg/L. MB-DCRAC adsorption system obeyed Freundlich model and pseudo-second order (PSO) model in terms of isotherm and kinetic studies, respectively.