Adsorption of Red Dye 40 from Wastewater via a Moringa Oleifera Coated Cotton Filter
Open Access
- Author:
- Terceiro, Kathryn
- Area of Honors:
- Chemical Engineering
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Stephanie Butler Velegol, Thesis Supervisor
Darrell Velegol, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Adsorption
Moringa
Red Dye - Abstract:
- Clean drinking water affects millions of people worldwide. In this experiment, a sustainable method of removing contaminants from water’s effectiveness is tested. Moringa oleifera (MO) seeds contain a cationic antimicrobial protein that can remove negatively charged particles from water. This positive protein can also “stick” to cotton, a negatively charged surface. MO trees grow commonly in areas where there are high levels of diarrheal diseases that come from drinking contaminated water. During production, 10-15% of food dyes leave the plant as effluents into the environment. These dyes can lead to toxic soil and can harm the wildlife that lives in the water it is released into. In this experiment, the viability of cotton coated in a MO serum to remove Red Dye 40 is tested. A cotton column model is used in this experiment to force contaminated water through the coated cotton. Initial results were inconsistent and did not show much of a trend. Through the course of the experiment, a pre-rinse of the cotton was added, the method for coating the cotton in MO serum was changed, and the flowrate of the pump was lowered. All of these were done to improve the consistency of the results to see if there is a trend relating the concentration of an initial dye solution and the amount of dye that can be removed from the water per gram of cotton used; the Qe. After these adjustments were made, the maximum Qe was experimentally found to be 1.3 mg dye/g cotton. A Langmuir isotherm is the model that best fits the data, as a monolayer is assumed. The positively charged dye only sticks to the cotton, it does not build on itself. The results overall show that this filter is a viable method of removal, and that it works best at higher concentrations of dye solution.