Adsorptive removal of methylene blue by tea waste

The potentiality of tea waste for the adsorptive removal of methylene blue, a cationic dye, from aqueous solution was studied. Batch kinetics and isotherm studies were carried out under varying experimental conditions of contact time, initial methylene blue concentration, adsorbent dosage and pH. The nature of the possible adsorbent and methylene blue interactions was examined by the FTIR technique. The pH(pzc) of the adsorbent was estimated by titration method and a value of 4.3+/-0.2 was obtained. An adsorption-desorption study was carried out resulting the mechanism of adsorption was reversible and ion-exchange. Adsorption equilibrium of tea waste reached within 5h for methylene blue concentrations of 20-50mg/L. The sorption was analyzed using pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second order kinetic models and the sorption kinetics…