Adsorption using chitosan and nano zerovalent iron composite material for sustainable water treatment

The growing global population and rapid urbanization have led to a water crisis. Current environmental issues emphasize the exploration of advanced materials and economical methods for purification of wastewater. The present work focuses on using advanced composite material made up of chitosan, activated carbon, zerovalent iron nanoparticles for adsorption of Congo red dye. The adsorbent was characterized using SEM, XRD and FTIR. An investigation was conducted on the critical parameters such as pH, the effect of initial dye concentration, temperature and the adsorbent dosage. The optimum dye to adsorbent ratio was analyzed. The composite material proposed as adsorbent was found to be very effective in adsorption of the Congo red dye. 100% adsorption was noted in 70 min under room temperature for the dye concentration of 100 ppm using 1 g of the adsorbent at pH 7. The efficacy of adsorption increased with the increase in temperature and found to increase under acidic pH. The optimum dye to adsorbent dosage is found to be 1:10. 100% of degradation is achieved within 50 min at a temperature of 80 degrees C and pH 1. The optimization studies were incorporated to investigate the effects of the variables on the process of adsorption using Box-Behnken design of experiments. The inquest of the present study provides an economical and efficient method for water treatment which can be easily adapted for the wastewater purification.