Comparison of novel Ziziphus lotus adsorbent and industrial carbon on methylene blue removal from aqueous solutions.

In this work, the use of a novel low-cost adsorbent derived from Ziziphus lotus (ZL) and industrial carbon (IC) has been successfully applied to the removal of methylene blue (MB) from aqueous solutions. The efficiency of this material was studied through Lagergren pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second-order kinetic models. The process for the novel activated carbon and the IC were best represented by the pseudo-second-order rate model. Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms were used to describe the sorption equilibrium data. The Langmuir model turned out to be the most adequate and maximum capacities were measured to be 833.33 and 142.85 mg.g-1 for ZL activated carbon and IC from Sigma Aldrich, respectively. The thermodynamic study revealed that the sorption process is spontaneous and endothermic for the two adsorbents. To explain the effectiveness of MB removal, ZL activated carbon was characterized by scanning electron microscopy, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area, X-ray diffraction and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy.