Activated carbon from pencil peel waste for effective removal of cationic crystal violet dye from aqueous solutions

[Display omitted] •Waste Pencil peel-derived activated carbon (PPAC) was developed as a cost-effective and eco-friendly adsorbent for removing Crystal Violet (CV) dye from wastewater.•PPAC achieved an impressive 99.5 % removal of CV dye at an optimized pH of 7.0, treating a 100 mg/L solution with 200 rpm agitation in just 55 min.•The adsorption followed the Freundlich isotherm model for multilayer adsorption and adhered to a pseudo-second-order kinetic rate.•The simplicity of preparation, excellent reusability over five cycles, and high efficiency make PPAC a promising and economical solution for CV dye removal from aqueous solutions. In this investigation, the pencil peel (PP) is utilized as a scavenger for adsorptive removal of crystal violet (CV) dye. Pencil peel activated carbon (PPAC) is produced through a straightforward physical activation method by annealing pencil peel in a muffle furnace at 300 °C. The prepared PPAC shows the mesoporous nature having specific surface area of 217.44 m2 g−1. The highest uptake of CV dye was observed at equilibrium as working solution pH-8.0, CV dye concentration-100 mg L-1, the PPAC dosage-0.25 g at 200 rpm speed. The observed experimental results align with the Freundlich adsorption isotherm model, suggesting of multilayer adsorption. The kinetic study attributes the uptake rate adheres to the pseudo-second-order kinetic rate model (regression coefficient, R2 = 0.99).