Coagulation-adsorption-oxidation for removing dyes from tannery wastewater

Dye removal from tannery wastewater is now a great concern given the ramifications for the environment in which the effluent ends up. Recently, the application of tannery solid waste as a byproduct to remove pollutants from tannery wastewater has garnered increasing attention. This study aims to extract biochar from tannery liming sludge for the removal of dye from wastewater. The activated (600 ºC) biochar was characterized by SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope), EDS (Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy), FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy), and surface area analysis utilizing the BET (Brunauer–Emmett–Teller) method and pH pzc (point of zero charges) analysis. The surface area and pH pzc of the biochar were determined as 9.29 m 2 /g and 8.7, respectively. The batch-wise coagulation-adsorption-oxidation was investigated for its efficacy in dye removal. The optimized conditions were as follows: the efficiency of dye, BOD (Biochemical Oxygen Demand) and COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand) were attained at 94.9%, 95.7% and 93.5%, respectively. SEM, EDS, and FTIR analyses before and after adsorption revealed that the derived biochar could adsorb dye from tannery wastewater. The adsorption behavior of the biochar fitted well to the Freundlich isotherm ( R 2 = 0.9987) and Pseudo 2 nd order ( R 2 = 0.9996) kinetic model. This investigation provides a new dimension for state-of-the-art utilization of tannery solid waste as a feasible strategy to remove dye from tannery wastewater.