Abstract

A NOVEL STRATEGY TOWARDS AGRO-WASTE MEDIATED DYE BIOSORPTION FOR WATER TREATMENT

Soching Luikham, Shweta Malve, Pramila Gawali and Sougata Ghosh*

Abstract

Dyes are used extensively in sectors such as food, drug, cosmetics, textile, ink, toner, press and automotive industries for coloration purposes. Dyes have toxic, mutagenic and carcinogenic effects which pose threat to the environment and aquatic life on being released directly without treatment. However, the available treatment methods are not only costly but also time consuming. In view of the background there is a growing need to develop more cost effective, rapid and environmentally benign methods for treatment of toxic dyes. Biosorption can be used for effective removal of dyes from environment using agricultural wastes. Herein we report the effective removal of industrially important five dyes, namely crystal violet, safranin, methylene blue, brilliant green and bromothymol blue using peels of Citrus limon, Citrus limetta, Cucumis sativus, Luffa acutangula and Solanum tuberosum. C. sativus peel showed maximum biosorption of crystal violet and safranin upto 96.78% at 30 min incubation and 99.78% at 20 min, respectively. L. acutangula and S. tuberosum exhibited 100% biosorption at 30 min against brilliant green while S. tuberosum showed 95.15 % biosorption of methylene blue instantly. Citrus limon peel showed 100% biosorption of bromothymol blue in 10 min. Thus, it is evident that the agro-waste can be proved to be most significant for water treatment. Evaluation of optimized parameters will help to develop further a green management technique for environmental remediation by dye removal from water.

Keywords: Agro-waste, Citrus limon, Citrus limetta, Cucumis sativus, Luffa acutangula, Solanum tuberosum, dye biosorption.