Activated carbon from pencil peel waste for effective removal of cationic crystal violet dye from aqueous solutions
Dilip D. Anuse, S. A. Patil, Ashwini A. Chorumale, Akanksha G. Kolekar, Prachi P. Bote, Laxman S. Walekar, Samadhan P. Pawar
Abstract
• Waste Pencil peel-derived activated carbon (PPAC) was developed as a cost-effective and eco-friendly adsorbent for removing Crystal Violet (CV) dye from wastewater. • PPAC achieved an impressive 99.5 % removal of CV dye at an optimized pH of 7.0, treating a 100 mg/L solution with 200 rpm agitation in just 55 min. • The adsorption followed the Freundlich isotherm model for multilayer adsorption and adhered to a pseudo-second-order kinetic rate. • The simplicity of preparation, excellent reusability over five cycles, and high efficiency make PPAC a promising and economical solution for CV dye removal from aqueous solutions. In this investigation, the pencil peel (PP) is utilized as a scavenger for adsorptive removal of crystal violet (CV) dye. Pencil peel activated carbon (PPAC) is produced through a straightforward physical activation method by annealing pencil peel in a muffle furnace at 300 °C. The prepared PPAC shows the mesoporous nature having specific surface area of 217.44 m 2 g −1 . The highest uptake of CV dye was observed at equilibrium as working solution pH-8.0, CV dye concentration-100 mg L -1 , the PPAC dosage-0.25 g at 200 rpm speed. The observed experimental results align with the Freundlich adsorption isotherm model, suggesting of multilayer adsorption. The kinetic study attributes the uptake rate adheres to the pseudo-second-order kinetic rate model (regression coefficient, R 2 = 0.99).