Abstract

Water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipies) has proved to be a menace in water bodies and studies are on, in the direction of solving this problem; one of which is to discover economic uses of water hyacinth. Adsorption of heavy metals and dyes from aqueous solutions by activated carbon derived from water hyacinth is one of such studies. In this study, dried and pulverized water hyacinth shoot was used for the sorption studies. This is in the bid of eliminating the rigours of producing activated carbon, thereby saving time and cost. The adsorption capacity of water hyacinth shoot for Methylene Blue dye was studied as a function of initial metal ion concentration in a batch system. Results showed that adsorption increased with methylene blue dye concentration. Seven adsorption isotherms, namely Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin, Dubinin-Radushkevich, Florry-Huggins, Harkins-Jura and Henry’s isotherms were applied to the adsorption data. Isotherm parameters showed that all the isotherms correlated well with the adsorption data. The maximum adsorption capacity of Methylene Blue dye to the dried water hyacinth shoot was found to be 58.14mg/g. The use of dried water hyacinth shoot would appreciably save the time and cost for producing activated carbon but not without some compromise of efficiency.

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