Evaluation of Red Marine Alga Kappaphycus alvarezii as Biosorbent for Methylene Blue: Isotherm, Kinetic, and Mechanism Studies

In this work, non-living red seaweed (Kappaphycus alvarezii) biomass was investigated as a new biosorbent of methylene blue from aqueous solution. The effect of operational parameters such as equilibrium pH, agitation time, initial dye concentrations, and biosorbent dosage on the biosorption capacity of Kappaphycus alvarezii was studied. The equilibrium solution pH was found to profoundly affect methylene blue sorption capacity of Kappaphycus alvarezii with pH 8 found to be optimum. Evidence from Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy pictures confirmed the dye biosorption mechanism as electrostatic interaction between the negatively charged seaweed surface and positively charged methylene blue. Biosorption isotherms indicated that Kappaphycus alvarezii exhibited methylene blue uptake of 74.4 mg/g, according to the Langmuir model. The equilibrium isotherm data were evaluated using the Freundlich, Langmuir, Redlich-Peterson, and Toth models. Kinetic studies revealed that methylene blue uptake was fast with 97% or more of the uptake occurred within 60 min of contact time. The pseudo first and second order models were applied to describe kinetic data, of which the pseudo-first order described experimental data better with high correlation coefficient and low percentage of error values.