Bioresource Technology 74 (2000) 263265

Short communication

Activated carbon from an agricultural by-product, for the treatment

of dyeing industry wastewater
K. Kadirvelu a,*, M. Palanival b, R. Kalpana b, S. Rajeswari c
a
D
epartement Syst
emes Energ
etiques et Environnment, Ecole Des Mines De Nantes, La Chantrerie, 4, Rue A. Kastler BP20722, 44307 Nantes, France
b
Department of Environmental Sciences, PGS College of Arts and Sciences, Coimbatore-641 014, TN, India
c
Department of Environmental Sciences, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore-641 046, TN, India
Received 20 November 1999; received in revised form 24 December 1999; accepted 27 December 1999

Abstract
Dyeing industry wastewater was employed for treatment by activated carbon prepared from coconut tree sawdust, at dierent
agitation times, carbon dose and pH. The physico-chemical characteristics of this activated carbon were determined. The adsorption
equilibrium for colour removal was reached within 60 min. In general, pH did not have any signicant eect on colour removal.
Removal of colour, chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD), total solids and total hardness increased
with increase in carbon dose. The use of carbon would be economical, since sawdust is a waste product and available in large
quantities, especially in India. 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Dyeing industry wastewater; Carbonised coconut tree sawdust; Adsorption; pH eect; Agitation time

1. Introduction masivayam and Kadirvelu, 1994), bagasse, paddy straw

Textile dyeing industry wastewater is one of the ma-
jor environmental pollutants in India. There are 600
factories in and around Coimbatore and Tirpur, the two
major industrial cities in the southern part of India. It is
rather dicult to treat dye euent because hot and
strongly coloured dyeing wastewater contains a large
amount of suspended solids, with a high chemical oxy-
gen demand (COD) concentration and greatly uctuat-
ing pH. Colour is the most obvious indicator of water
pollution. The discharge of coloured waste is not only
damaging the aesthetic nature of receiving streams, but
also it may be toxic to the aquatic life. In addition,
colour interferes with the transmission of sunlight into a
stream and therefore reduces photosynthetic action.
Recently a number of non-conventional adsorbents have
been used for colour removal from wastewater by sev-
eral investigators. These include agricultural solid
wastes such as biogas residual slurry (Namasivayam and
Yamuna, 1994), coconut husk (Low and Lee, 1990),
orange peel (Namasivayam et al., 1996), coirpith (Na-
*
Corresponding author. Fax: +33-2-5185-8299.
E-mail address: kadirvelu@mailcity.com (K. Kadirvelu).
(Deo and Ali, 1993), and industrial solid wastes such as
Fe(III)/Cr(III) hydroxide (Namasivayam et al., 1994),
red mud (Namasivayam and Arasi, 1997), and y ash
(Guptha et al., 1990).
According to the Environmental Protection Agency,
stringent limits of colour concentration in the euents
are given. The removal of dyes in an economic fashion
remains an important problem. Considerable work has
been carried out on the removal of colour from textile
dying industry wastewater through chemical coagula-
tion (Panswed and Wangchaisuwan, 1986), chemical
oxidation (Benzedits, 1980), and by adsorption (Na-
masivayam and Kadirvelu, 1994; Namasivayam and
Yamuna, 1994; Namasivayam and Kanchana, 1993).
Adsorption seems to oer the best prospects over all
other treatment techniques (Mckay et al., 1979). Acti-
vated carbon is the most popular adsorbent and has
been used with great success, but it is expensive. Con-
sequently, new materials are being studied (Asfour et al.,
1985; Khare et al., 1987). The objective of the present
investigation was to evaluate the adsorption capacity of
activated carbon, prepared from coconut tree sawdust,
with respect to dyeing industry wastewater, and the
various factors that aect the eciency of the removal of
pollutants.

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264 K. Kadirvelu et al. / Bioresource Technology 74 (2000) 263265

2. Methods trophotometer (U-3210, Hitachi, Japan). The adsorbent

Coconut tree sawdust was collected from a saw mill
near Pollachi, Coimbatore district, Tamilnadu. The
waste sawdust was dried in sunlight and used for the
carbon preparation. The dried sawdust was sieved using
a 2-mm sieve. Then it was subjected to carbonisation at
700C for 30 min using a digital mue furnace: 25 g of
sawdust was taken in a 100 ml capacity silica crucible
and kept in the mue furnace, for attaining a temper-
ature of 700C, for about 30 min. After 30 min the
carbonised material was taken out and immediately
covered with a petridish to avoid contact with atmo-
spheric air. This carbon was used for further treatment
studies. Six samples of dyeing industry wastewater were
collected in plastic cans, which were already washed and
rinsed with distilled water, from a dyeing industry at
Tirpur. A typical treatment consisted of agitating 0.5 g
of adsorbent and 100 ml of wastewater in 300 ml bottles
at 120 rpm using a mechanical shaker. These bottles
were withdrawn from the shaker at predetermined times.
The sample was separated by centrifugation at 1000 rpm
and the supernatant was analysed using an UV-spec-
Table 1
Characteristics of carbon
Parameter
pH of 1% solution
Bulk density (g/ml)
Porosity (%)
Moisture (%)
Ash (%)
Iron content (mg/g)
Surface area (m2 /g)
Decolourising power (mg/g)
Solubility in water (%)
Solubility in 0.25 M HCl (%)
Iodine number (mg/g)
dose was varied from 0.5 to 3.5 g per 100 ml wastewaters
and the pH from 1 to 9 using HCl or NaOH. The
analysis of wastewater was carried out using standard
methods (APHA, 1980). Experiments were carried out
in duplicate and the maximum deviation was 3%.
3. Results and discussion
Table 1 shows the characteristics of carbonised co-
conut tree sawdust (CCTSD). Table 2 shows the char-
acteristics of typical dyeing wastewater (samples 1 to 6).
The sample six was used for the present treatment
studies. The absorption spectrum of the wastewater
sample showed maximum absorption at 540 nm. The k
max was used to follow the colour removal for various
treatment studies.
The colour removal increased with agitation time and
attained equilibrium at 60 min and remained constant
thereafter. Agitation time was maintained at 60 min in
subsequent studies. The treatments of dyeing industry
wastewater using carbonised coirpith (Namasivayam
and Kadirvelu, 1994), red mud (Namasivayam and Ar-
asi, 1997), wood (Asfour et al., 1985), and peat (Poots
et al., 1976), were readily comparable with agitation
time in this work. The percent removal of colour COD,
Value biological oxygen demand (BOD), total solids and
9.31 hardness increased with increasing adsorbent dose at
0.7621 natural pH (9.66). Maximum percent removals of 100,
85.6 56, 35, 60 and 36 for colour, COD, BOD, total solids
3.0 and total hardness, respectively was observed by a dose
7.6
of 3 g/100 ml of wastewater. Namasivayam and Ka-
0.13
362 dirvelu (1994) have reported similar results for the
22.5 treatment of dyeing wastewater using carbonised coir-
2.0 pith. In general pH did not have signicant inuence on
8.6 the colour removal. Namasivayam and Kadirvelu (1994)
425
reported that varying the pH of dyeing wastewater

Table 2
Characteristics of dyeing industry water samples
Parameter Value
Samples
I II III IV V VI
pH 7.91 10.85 7.62 10.27 8.7 9.66
Turbidity NTU 5.0 12.7 9.7 11.5 7 6.9
Total solids (mg/l) 11276 12489 10758 13321 12589 13190
Suspended solids (mg/l) 276 848 2 96 608 207 411
Dissolved solids (mg/l) 10952 11256 10200 12369 11956 12584
Total hardness (mg/l) 803 552 741 569 654 581
Oil and grease (mg/l) 3 2 1 5 8 6
COD (mg/l) 240 844 317 486 196 431
BOD (mg/l) 41.1 152 38.1 18 34.4 79
Chloride (mg/l) 2765.1 1488.1 2729.7 794.8 596.6 2690
Sodium (mg/l) 985 1400 730 1675 225 2100
Potassium (mg/l) 44 49 60 62.5 15 128
 K. Kadirvelu et al. / Bioresource Technology 74 (2000) 263265
showed very little eect on the removal of colour and
organics from textile industry euents by activated
carbons. This suggests that, given sucient time of
contact, the organics are able to penetrate the pores of
carbon completely and fully saturate the carbon pores.
Preliminary investigation showed that carbonised
coconut tree sawdust was also ecient for adsorbing
toxic heavy metals and organics, including pesticides.
Further work is in progress. The present investigation
shows that waste coconut tree sawdust can be employed
eectively for the treatment of dyeing euents. The
waste coconut-tree sawdust is abundantly available in
southern India and hence its application to the treat-
ment of dyeing wastewater is expected to be economi-
cally feasible.
Acknowledgements
Authors are grateful to Dr. P. Sampathkumar, Prin-
cipal and Prof. D.K.P. Varatharajan, Secretary, PSG
College of Arts and Science for their encouragement.
Authors are also thankful to Dr. V. Subburam, Pro-
fessor, Department of Environmental Sciences, Bha-
rathiar University, Coimbatore, for laboratory facilities
and valuable help.
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