Cost-effective removal of toxic methylene blue dye from textile effluents by new integrated crosslinked chitosan/aspartic acid hydrogels.

Chitosan/aspartic acid hydrogels were synthesized for MB dye removal from textile aqueous effluents with different ratios by gelation of chitosan with non-toxic gelling agent, crosslinker, glutaraldehyde (Glu). The obtained hydrogels were characterized by spectral and morphological techniques. The characterization techniques confirmed successful preparations and MB dye adsorption. Batch experiments were done to investigate the effects of adsorbent dose, pH, contact time, temperature, and initial MB dye concentration. The optimum conditions were: adsorbent dose 0.1 g, pH 5, contact time 30 min, and temperature 25 °C for Chitosan-Aspartic Acid Hydrogel 1 (CSAA-HG) and adsorbent dose 0.4 g, pH 2, contact time 60 min, temperature 25 °C for Chitosan-Aspartic Acid Hydrogel 2 (CSAA-HG). Adsorption capacity of newly hydrogels CSAA-HG was compared with each other. Adsorption efficiencies reached 99.85 % for CSAA-HG and 99.88 % for CSAA-HG. MB dye adsorption on CSAA-HG followed Freundlich isotherm model (R = 0.94 and 0.92, respectively). Both adsorbents exhibited pseudo-second-order kinetics for MB dye adsorption (R = 1). The negative ΔH indicated that the MB dye adsorption was exothermic, negative ΔG confirmed that MB dye adsorption process was spontaneous and low values of ∆S indicated low degree of freedom, ordered MB dye molecules on CSAA-HG surfaces.