Adsorbents from the by-product of palm oil refinery for methylene blue removal

Abstract

The present work was aimed at evaluating the removal of methylene blue by palm fatty acid distillate-based adsorbents. The adsorbents at different weight ratios of palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD) to palm kernel shell (PKS) were prepared at 600 °C for 2 hours. Results show that the yield of adsorbent upon heat treatment decreased with increasing weight ratio, with yield as low as 0.53% was recorded by adsorbent derived by using only PFAD. The methylene blue adsorption data show a promising performance of PFAD-based adsorbents as compared to that of PKS-adsorbent (char) with qe = 7.6 mg/g at Co = 20.8 mg/L. To conclude, PFAD is a potential candidate of dye adsorbent.