Bioresource Technology 74 (2000) 263265

Short communication

Activated carbon from an agricultural by-product, for the treatment of dyeing industry wastewater
K. Kadirvelu a,*, M. Palanival b, R. Kalpana b, S. Rajeswari c
a

partement Syste mes Energe tiques et Environnment, Ecole Des Mines De Nantes, La Chantrerie, 4, Rue A. Kastler BP20722, 44307 Nantes, France De b Department of Environmental Sciences, PGS College of Arts and Sciences, Coimbatore-641 014, TN, India c Department of Environmental Sciences, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore-641 046, TN, India Received 20 November 1999; received in revised form 24 December 1999; accepted 27 December 1999

Abstract Dyeing industry wastewater was employed for treatment by activated carbon prepared from coconut tree sawdust, at dierent agitation times, carbon dose and pH. The physico-chemical characteristics of this activated carbon were determined. The adsorption equilibrium for colour removal was reached within 60 min. In general, pH did not have any signicant eect on colour removal. Removal of colour, chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD), total solids and total hardness increased with increase in carbon dose. The use of carbon would be economical, since sawdust is a waste product and available in large quantities, especially in India. 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Dyeing industry wastewater; Carbonised coconut tree sawdust; Adsorption; pH eect; Agitation time

1. Introduction Textile dyeing industry wastewater is one of the major environmental pollutants in India. There are 600 factories in and around Coimbatore and Tirpur, the two major industrial cities in the southern part of India. It is rather dicult to treat dye euent because hot and strongly coloured dyeing wastewater contains a large amount of suspended solids, with a high chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentration and greatly uctuating pH. Colour is the most obvious indicator of water pollution. The discharge of coloured waste is not only damaging the aesthetic nature of receiving streams, but also it may be toxic to the aquatic life. In addition, colour interferes with the transmission of sunlight into a stream and therefore reduces photosynthetic action. Recently a number of non-conventional adsorbents have been used for colour removal from wastewater by several investigators. These include agricultural solid wastes such as biogas residual slurry (Namasivayam and Yamuna, 1994), coconut husk (Low and Lee, 1990), orange peel (Namasivayam et al., 1996), coirpith (Na-

Corresponding author. Fax: +33-2-5185-8299. E-mail address: kadirvelu@mailcity.com (K. Kadirvelu).

masivayam and Kadirvelu, 1994), bagasse, paddy straw (Deo and Ali, 1993), and industrial solid wastes such as Fe(III)/Cr(III) hydroxide (Namasivayam et al., 1994), red mud (Namasivayam and Arasi, 1997), and y ash (Guptha et al., 1990). According to the Environmental Protection Agency, stringent limits of colour concentration in the euents are given. The removal of dyes in an economic fashion remains an important problem. Considerable work has been carried out on the removal of colour from textile dying industry wastewater through chemical coagulation (Panswed and Wangchaisuwan, 1986), chemical oxidation (Benzedits, 1980), and by adsorption (Namasivayam and Kadirvelu, 1994; Namasivayam and Yamuna, 1994; Namasivayam and Kanchana, 1993). Adsorption seems to oer the best prospects over all other treatment techniques (Mckay et al., 1979). Activated carbon is the most popular adsorbent and has been used with great success, but it is expensive. Consequently, new materials are being studied (Asfour et al., 1985; Khare et al., 1987). The objective of the present investigation was to evaluate the adsorption capacity of activated carbon, prepared from coconut tree sawdust, with respect to dyeing industry wastewater, and the various factors that aect the eciency of the removal of pollutants.

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2. Methods Coconut tree sawdust was collected from a saw mill near Pollachi, Coimbatore district, Tamilnadu. The waste sawdust was dried in sunlight and used for the carbon preparation. The dried sawdust was sieved using a 2-mm sieve. Then it was subjected to carbonisation at 700C for 30 min using a digital mue furnace: 25 g of sawdust was taken in a 100 ml capacity silica crucible and kept in the mue furnace, for attaining a temperature of 700C, for about 30 min. After 30 min the carbonised material was taken out and immediately covered with a petridish to avoid contact with atmospheric air. This carbon was used for further treatment studies. Six samples of dyeing industry wastewater were collected in plastic cans, which were already washed and rinsed with distilled water, from a dyeing industry at Tirpur. A typical treatment consisted of agitating 0.5 g of adsorbent and 100 ml of wastewater in 300 ml bottles at 120 rpm using a mechanical shaker. These bottles were withdrawn from the shaker at predetermined times. The sample was separated by centrifugation at 1000 rpm and the supernatant was analysed using an UV-spec-

trophotometer (U-3210, Hitachi, Japan). The adsorbent dose was varied from 0.5 to 3.5 g per 100 ml wastewaters and the pH from 1 to 9 using HCl or NaOH. The analysis of wastewater was carried out using standard methods (APHA, 1980). Experiments were carried out in duplicate and the maximum deviation was 3%.

3. Results and discussion Table 1 shows the characteristics of carbonised coconut tree sawdust (CCTSD). Table 2 shows the characteristics of typical dyeing wastewater (samples 1 to 6). The sample six was used for the present treatment studies. The absorption spectrum of the wastewater sample showed maximum absorption at 540 nm. The k max was used to follow the colour removal for various treatment studies. The colour removal increased with agitation time and attained equilibrium at 60 min and remained constant thereafter. Agitation time was maintained at 60 min in subsequent studies. The treatments of dyeing industry wastewater using carbonised coirpith (Namasivayam and Kadirvelu, 1994), red mud (Namasivayam and Arasi, 1997), wood (Asfour et al., 1985), and peat (Poots et al., 1976), were readily comparable with agitation time in this work. The percent removal of colour COD, biological oxygen demand (BOD), total solids and hardness increased with increasing adsorbent dose at natural pH (9.66). Maximum percent removals of 100, 56, 35, 60 and 36 for colour, COD, BOD, total solids and total hardness, respectively was observed by a dose of 3 g/100 ml of wastewater. Namasivayam and Kadirvelu (1994) have reported similar results for the treatment of dyeing wastewater using carbonised coirpith. In general pH did not have signicant inuence on the colour removal. Namasivayam and Kadirvelu (1994) reported that varying the pH of dyeing wastewater

Table 1 Characteristics of carbon Parameter pH of 1% solution Bulk density (g/ml) Porosity (%) Moisture (%) Ash (%) Iron content (mg/g) Surface area (m2 /g) Decolourising power (mg/g) Solubility in water (%) Solubility in 0.25 M HCl (%) Iodine number (mg/g) Value 9.31 0.7621 85.6 3.0 7.6 0.13 362 22.5 2.0 8.6 425

Table 2 Characteristics of dyeing industry water samples Parameter Value Samples I pH Turbidity NTU Total solids (mg/l) Suspended solids (mg/l) Dissolved solids (mg/l) Total hardness (mg/l) Oil and grease (mg/l) COD (mg/l) BOD (mg/l) Chloride (mg/l) Sodium (mg/l) Potassium (mg/l) 7.91 5.0 11276 276 10952 803 3 240 41.1 2765.1 985 44 II 10.85 12.7 12489 848 11256 552 2 844 152 1488.1 1400 49 III 7.62 9.7 10758 2 96 10200 741 1 317 38.1 2729.7 730 60 IV 10.27 11.5 13321 608 12369 569 5 486 18 794.8 1675 62.5 V 8.7 7 12589 207 11956 654 8 196 34.4 596.6 225 15 VI 9.66 6.9 13190 411 12584 581 6 431 79 2690 2100 128

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showed very little eect on the removal of colour and organics from textile industry euents by activated carbons. This suggests that, given sucient time of contact, the organics are able to penetrate the pores of carbon completely and fully saturate the carbon pores. Preliminary investigation showed that carbonised coconut tree sawdust was also ecient for adsorbing toxic heavy metals and organics, including pesticides. Further work is in progress. The present investigation shows that waste coconut tree sawdust can be employed eectively for the treatment of dyeing euents. The waste coconut-tree sawdust is abundantly available in southern India and hence its application to the treatment of dyeing wastewater is expected to be economically feasible.

Acknowledgements Authors are grateful to Dr. P. Sampathkumar, Principal and Prof. D.K.P. Varatharajan, Secretary, PSG College of Arts and Science for their encouragement. Authors are also thankful to Dr. V. Subburam, Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, for laboratory facilities and valuable help.

References
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