Al-Fe LAYERED HYDROXIDE WITH BENTONITE CLAY AND APPLICATION FOR THE REMOVAL OF DYE FROM AQUEOUS SOLUTIONS

Abstract

The research was aimed to investigate the effect of decolourisation of Alizarin yellow dye from aqueous solutions using Al-Fe layered Hydroxide clay.Batch adsorption technique was employed to determine the optimum values of some parameters i.e initial dye concentration (10 – 50 mg/l), contact time (10 – 50 minutes) and adsorbent dose (0.1 – 0.5 g). The results obtained indicate that the dye concentration decreases with increase in contact time and adsorbent dosage.The Adsorption isotherms observed showed that the Langmuir adsorption Isotherm was best fitted having the maximum decolourisation of 76.89 mg/g and R² value of 0.986. The Al-Fe layered Hydroxide prepared was characterized by SEM, FT-IR and XRD before and after the adsorption process. The SEM results showed the porosity was roughly filled after the adsorption. The FT_IR spectra showed the presence of OH, C=O and N-CH at 3625 cm^-1, 1633 cm^-1 and 2806 cm^-1. The XRD results indicate that the crystalline structure was not altered after the adsorption process. In this research, a low cost and effective adsorbent was used for the removal of Alizarin Yellow dye in an aqueous solution.