The chemical contamination of water by dyes resulting from the disposal of industrial effluents triggered the need to develop technologies to remove such pollutants. Occurring naturally in the Amazon region, cassava differs from other cassava varieties in that it has high humidity and low starch yield. As part of a project on cassava technologies, this study analyzed the best conditions for the production of activated carbon from cassava solid waste for the adsorption of methylene blue dye. The Box-Behnken experimental design was used to determine the optimal production conditions. First, a physical-chemical analysis of the precursors was carried out, then 30 coal samples were produced according to the experimental plan. The maximum adsorbed amount and percentage of removal were determined under finite bath conditions, at a concentration of 120 mg/L and with 0.01 g of coal sample. The best conditions of temperature, acid concentration and heat contact time were observed at 600 ºC, 25 % and 3 h for peel and 600 ºC, 10.2 % and 3 h for pulp. These samples were subjected to physical-chemical and morphological characterization analyzes using scanning electron microscopy and Fourier transform infrared. For the adsorption kinetics tests, the models that best fitted the experimental data were intraparticle diffusion for shell and pulp coals, and for the adsorption equilibrium tests, the Freundlich and Langmuir models best fitted the experimental data for shell and pulp, respectively. Analysis of the adsorbents reveals a lower concentration of functional groups, however, in the pulp adsorbent, the loss of functional groups related to groups containing oxygen can be observed, which may help explain the lower adsorption capacity observed for pulp adsorbents. The activated carbons produced from the solid residues of cassava roots (pulp and peel) showed that, under the conditions used in this work, they can be applied as effective bioadsorbents in the removal of methylene blue in aqueous solution.
|
