Author(s)

Ahmed H. A. Dabwan^1*, Nakane Yuki², Nur Amni Mohd Asri¹, Hideyuki Katsumata^2,3, Tohru Suzuki^3,4, Satoshi Kaneco^2,3,4

¹Faculty of Chemical Engineering Technology, Tati University College, Terengganu, Malaysia.
²Department of Chemistry for Materials, Graduate School of Engineering, Mie University, Mie, Japan.
³Mie Global Environment Center for Education & Research, Mie University, Mie, Japan.
⁴Research Center of Process for Environmental Load Reduction, Mie University, Mie, Japan.

The present work was done in order to develop and find out suitable conversion methods for coconut husk wastes into value-added products. It is well-known that coconuts husk waste is hydrophobic therefore ethanol with different doses was used as a surfactant to enhance the removal efficiency. Treated samples at different adsorbent amounts, sintering temperatures & sintering time, stirring time, pH, and solution temperatures for color removal of Methylene Blue (MB) & Rhodamine B (RhB) and ammonium concentration were evaluated by using UV-Visible Spectroscopy. At 300°C, results showed complete removal for MB and more than 75% for RhB, whereas removal of ammonium ion reached around 52% when sintering product from husk waste was used. Further investigation was carried out for ammonium ion to understand the desorption kinetic behaviors and isotherm models. Kinetics indicated that desorption of ammonium ion followed pseudo-first order equation. Adsorption thermodynamic parameters such as ΔG, ΔH, and ΔS followed Van’t Hoff plot for adsorption and found to be negative which indicated that the adsorption process for ammonium onto coconut husk was physical, spontaneous and exothermic.

Coconut Husk, Sintering Temperature, Methylene Blue, Rhodamine B, Ammonium Ions, Adsorption, Kinetics

Dabwan, A. , Yuki, N. , Asri, N. , Katsumata, H. , Suzuki, T. and Kaneco, S. (2015) Removal of Methylene Blue, Rhodamine B and Ammonium Ion from Aqueous Solution by Adsorption onto Sintering Porous Materials Prepared from Coconut Husk Waste. Open Journal of Inorganic Non-metallic Materials, 5, 21-30. doi: 10.4236/ojinm.2015.52003.