Competitive Adsorption Analysis for Removal of Methyl Orange and Rhodamine-B Dyes Using Fixed-Bed Carbon Column

Fixed-bed column adsorption has been widely adopted for selective removal of pollutants from industrial effluents across the world. In the meantime, investigations on competitive (antagonistic) or cooperative (synergestic) adsorption analysis for simultaneous removal of multiple dyes from multi-pollutant mixture using fixed-bed adsorption column is scarce. Therefore, this study investigates removal of methyl orange (MO) and rhodamine-B (RB) dyes from mono-component (MO/ RB) and multi-component (MO + RB) system by using coconut shell activated carbon (CAC) in fixed-bed column. The influence of operating conditions viz. bed depth (D: 5–15 cm), flow rate (Q: 0.25–1 L/h) and dye concentration (Co: 25–100 mg/L) were examined. Subsequently, Thomas, Adams-Bohart and Yoon-Nelson models were used to model breakthrough curves. In addition, antagonistic (competitive) or synergistic (cooperative) nature of MO and RB dye removal in multi-component (MO + RB) system was elucidated. From results, it was observed that Thomas model better represented experimental data for sorption of MO and RB dyes from both mono-component and multi-component systems. Adsorption capacity of 19.51 and 15.54 mg/g for removal MO and RB using CAC. On other hand present adsorption capacity follows antagonistic nature in removal of MO and RB dye in multi-component system.