Cationic surfactant impregnated activated carbon for adsorption of reactive dye

Textile industry is one of the biggest users of water that produce waste consists of complex chemicals structure including dye during various processing stages. Reactive Blue 4 is one of the reactive dye that released by this industry. An effective method in treating RB4 is by a chemical treatment that is adsorption. The RB4 pollutant was treated by adsorption process with activated carbon impregnated with cationic surfactant. The adsorption performance of AC-Cationic Surfactant was investigated by studying parameters that effecting the efficiency of removal of reactive dye, RB4 from aqueous solution that were surfactant loading impregnated with AC, temperature and pH of initial solutions. Cationic surfactant greatly increased AC adsorption capacity for RB4 with 67.25% of removal in 5 hours in acidic pH range 5.0-5.9 at 50°C temperature by direct method while by indirect method, the removal achieved 71.25% of RB4 removal in 7 hours in acidic pH of initial solution at 30°C. It was observed that adsorption of RB4 dye was greatly enhanced by modification of AC with cationic surfactant impregnated by indirect method compared to direct method.