Effect of pretreatment of biosorbent in biosorption: A comparative study

Abstract

The textile industry generates large amounts of wastewater with strong BOD/COD and salt load, which are often seen in dark colour. An alternative treatment for this type of wastewater is the biosorption, where it involves a passive uptake of both the organic and inorganic compounds, including dye or its derivatives, using non-growing/living microbial mass. Biosorbent pretreatment, autoclaving techniques and combined with the chemical processes, such as acidification, were discussed. The response surface methodology (RSM) is used for researching and developing the effect of pH, contact time, dosage, and biosorbent size in the biosorption process in synthetic textile wastewater using Bjerkandera adusta. When the pH was 4, and the contact time, biosorbent dosage and biosorbent size were 90 minutes, 3000 mg/L and 0.4 mm, respectively, the optimal removal circumstance was able to be verified, at 53.55%, and 81.3% of colour removals were demonstrated through the experimental procedure. This leads to the high acceptance of the experimental findings and model forecast. In the optimisation of experimental parameters, the quadratic model estimated both R2 and R2adj correlation coefficients quite satisfactorily as 0.988, 0.977, 0.926, and 0.783, respectively. It is more effective to combine the autoclaving technique with chemical processes than adopting just the autoclaving method. The two-sided t-test was used to identify any significant variations in the preparation techniques of biosorbents using p < 0.05. The biosorbent study using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and characterisation of surface functional group using Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy confirms the results obtained.