EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES ON ADSORPTION BY MAGNIFERA INDICA LEAVES

R VIJAYARAM; D GOKUL

Abstract

Decolourisation of dye (Congo red) from aqueous solution using an adsorbent prepared from Mango leaf was investigated in this study. The influence of time of mechanical shaking , mass of adsorbent(0.5,1,1.5,2 mg), initial pH, initial concentration (2000 ,1500,1000,500,250 mg/L) on adsorption has been evaluated. It is shown that adsorbent prepared from Mango leaf powder has a relatively high adsorption capacity for these adsorbates. For 500 mg/L of solution prepared, the percentage of decolourisation for 2 g of adsorbent and 1 hour of mechanical shaking was found to be 41.4% for Congo red. All the experiments were carried out at normal room temperature (25 -28 ºC) and neutral pH. A set of readings taken by varying pH shows that the adsorption capacity is also influenced by pH. KEYWORDS: Decolourisation, Congo Red, Adsorption, Colour removal.