Application of cress seed musilage magnetic nanocomposites for removal of methylene blue dye from water

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2019.06.083Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Effects of cress seed and Fe3O4 nanoparticles offers a high dye adsorption capacity.

  • Methylene blue dye can be easily removed from water using these nanoparticles.

  • Methylene blue dye is adsorbed by cress seed mucilage in aqueous solutions.

  • Adsorption of methylene blue by cress seed mucilage is spontaneous and exothermic.

Abstract

A magnetic nanocomposite adsorbent based on cress seed mucilage (CSM) was synthesized for removing methylene blue (MB) cationic dye from aqueous solutions. These adsorbent nanoparticles were prepared by in situ formation of magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (MIONs) coupled with CSM mucilage and benefited from the advantages of both CSM and MIONs. The CSM-MIONs adsorbent exhibited a great dye adsorption capacity along with a strong magnetic character. The effect of various experimental parameters were studied on the adsorption performance of CSM-MIONs including pH, ionic strength, initial dye concentration, contact time and temperature. The adsorbent nanoparticles were characterized by FTIR, FESEM, XRD, DLS, and VSM techniques. Thermodynamic analysis indicated that the studied dye adsorption process has a spontaneous and exothermic nature. The equilibrium adsorption data were in agreement with the Langmuir kinetic model (R2 > 0.99) and described by the pseudo-second-order Langmuir equation (R2 > 0.98). It was revealed that intraparticle diffusion is not the only rate controlling factor. The CSM-MIONs adsorbents could be well regenerated using an acid solution, and showed high adsorption capability even after five desorption–adsorption cycles. The obtained results showed that the CSM-MIONs can potentially be used as a high-performance low cost adsorbent in wastewater treatment.

Introduction

Dyes are generally used in a variety of industries such as paper, plastics, food, textile etc. for coloring their products which considerably contribute to environment pollution [1,2]. The color of water is publicly considered as an indicator of its quality such that very small amounts of some contaminant dyes (below 1 ppm) are fairly evident and unfavorable in aqueous media [3,4]. Aquatic life would greatly suffer from a lack of sufficient sunlight in water polluted by dyes where photosynthetic metabolism of aquatic biota is disrupted and their survival is threatened by toxic dye components [5,6]. Also, the complex aromatic nature of some dyes makes them resistant to biodegradation [7]. Furthermore, skin irritation, eye burns, heartbeat anomalies and carcinogenicity are among the harmful effects to humans caused by dye pollution [2,8].

The production rate of commercial dyes is reported to be 700 × 105 metric tons per year comprising over 100,000 different dyes [3,5]. It is reported that 10–15% of industrial dyes are disposed to the environment [2,9]. Methylene blue is one of the commonly used cationic dyes in textiles, cosmetics, paper coatings, hygienic and medical applications which would potentially affect human health and cause certain symptoms such as hypertension (high blood pressure), cyanosis and jaundice [1]. Therefore, treatment of wastewater containing MB dye by a suitable method prior to release to the environment is essentially required.

A range of different methods have been adopted to remove dyes from wastewater including adsorption [10], coagulation and flocculation [11], ion exchange [12], reverse osmosis [13], advanced oxidation [14] and membrane filtration [15]. Due to its facile operation and effective performance for different dyes, the adsorption method is applied as one of the most efficient dye removal methods [[16], [17], [18], [19]]. Recently, magnetic nanoparticles have been introduced to remove or separate dyes from wastewater without bringing further contamination and large scale treatments in a short time. Also, their promising magnetic properties make it possible for dye molecules to be feasibly separated from solution by applying a magnetic field [2,20]. Magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (MIONs) with their remarkable magnetic response and electronic structure have extendedly contributed to industry for various objectives including dye removal [21,22]. Many studies have been devoted to developing novel environmentally friendly adsorbents which are both highly effective and low-cost as well. Biological adsorbents (bioadsorbents) are recognized as easily available materials with low toxicity that are also cost-effective [2,23]. Application of potato plant wastes [19], peach gum polysaccharide [18], Bambusa tulda [12], almond gum [14], quince seed mucilage [23], pineapple stem waste [24] and chitosan-based semi-IPN hydrogel [25] are examples of available bioadsorbents that are found effective in the process of dye removal from aqueous environment. However, the adsorption capacity of the bioadsorbents reported earlier mostly show low values, which is a major drawback for their adsorption performance. Therefore, more effective and low cost bioadsorbents are highly demanded.

Lepidium sativum (garden cress) species of Cruciferae family usually grows in southern Asia, North America and Europe. Its brownish red seeds are rich sources of hydrocolloids containing a considerable amount of anionic mucilaginous content with a high molecular weight which consists of water-soluble polysaccharides. The polysaccharides extracted from L. sativum consist of mannose (38.9%), arabinose (19.4%), galacturonic acid (8%), fructose (6.8%), glucuronic acid (6.7%), galactose (4.7%), rhamnose (1.9%) and glucose (1.0%) [26].

This study is dedicated to examining the capability of CSM-MIONs as a low cost adsorbent to remove MB dye from aqueous solutions. We aimed at preparing this CSM-based adsorbent using environmentally friendly materials. Structural, morphological and magnetic properties of the CSM-MIONs were studied by XRD, FTIR, FESEM, VSM and DLS. The effects of experimental parameters such as initial dye concentration, contact time, solution pH and ionic strength were studied. Adsorption kinetics, thermodynamic behavior, isotherm models and regeneration ability analyses were carried out on adsorption performance of the CSM-MIONs.

Section snippets

Materials

Cress seeds were provided from local market in Isfahan, Iran. Iron (II) sulfate (FeSO4.7H2O), Iron (III) nitrate (Fe(NO3)3.9 H2O) and Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH) analytical grade powders were purchased from Merck Co. (Germany) and the methylene blue (MB) dye was obtained from Sigma-Aldrich Co. (US). Also, deionized water was used as solvent for all precursors.

Room temperature FTIR spectroscopy was performed by a Bruker tensor 27 FTIR spectrophotometer. The surface morphologies of synthesized iron

Characterization of CSM-MIONs adsorbent

The FTIR spectra of all materials in the range of 400–4000 cm−1 wavenumbers are exhibited in Fig. 3(a). The band observed at 1630 cm−1 in all three spectra is related to symmetric–asymmetric carboxylate groups [29,30]. An adsorption band has appeared at 1414 cm−1 which is attributed to Csingle bondH bending vibrations of CSM. The 1151 cm−1 band shows weak Csingle bondO stretching and the band at 2924 cm−1 refers to symmetric-asymmetric Csingle bondH stretching. Also, the band at 3435 cm−1 belongs to Osingle bondH stretching of CSM [31].

Conclusions

We investigated the removal of cationic MB dye from aqueous environment using a CSM-based magnetic biosorbent. Formation of MIONs in structure of the biosorbent was confirmed by FTIR, FESEM, DLS, XRD and VSM. Synergistic effects of CSM and Fe3O4 nanoparticles offered high adsorption capacity and suitable selectivity for MB molecules, along with a facile magnetic separation. A considerable increase in adsorption capacity occurred by increasing the initial MB content and pH of dye solution.

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