Removal of C.I. Acid red 1 (AR1) Dye Pollutant from Contaminated Waters by Adsorption Method using Sunflower Seed Shells and Pine cone as Agro-waste Materials

Dyes are widely used in various industries, since their direct discharge to nature can cause many biological and environmental problems. Some of these dyes are toxic, carcinogenic and can cause skin and eye irritation. There are various dye removal techniques, but Adsorption was found to be very effective and cheap method among the all available dye removal methods. The purpose of this study was to investigate the adsorption of C.I. Acid Red 1 (AR1) dye pollutant to sunflower seed shells (SSS) and pine cones (PC) as agro waste materials, to find out the optimal conditions for major operational parameters such as contact time, adsorbent dosage, initial dye concentration and pH. The results showed that the optimal conditions for decolorization of the solution containing 40 mg/L AR1,by SSS and PC adsorbents with removal efficiency of 84.2% and 74.47%, respectively, were obtained at100 min of contact time and pH= 2 at room temperature. Optimal value of adsorbent dosage for SSS and PC was determined 2.6 and 3.2 g/L, respectively. The physicochemical properties of the adsorbent were studied using various descriptive techniques such as FTIR, SEM, and BET. The adsorption process of both adsorbents was best fitted to Freundlich model and followed pseudo-second-order rate kinetics.