Design and construction of nanoscale material for ultrasonic assisted adsorption of dyes: Application of derivative spectrophotometry and experimental design methodology

Response surface methodology (RSM) based on central rotatable experimental design was used to investigate the effect of ultrasound assisted simultaneous adsorption process variables on Cu: ZnS-NPs-AC from aqueous solution. Cu: ZnS-NPs-AC was characterized using field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (EDX) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). To overcome the severe methylene blue (MB) and brilliant green (BG) dyes spectral overlapping, derivative spectrophotometric method were successfully applied for the simultaneous determination of dyes in their binary solutions. Simultaneous determination of the dyes can be carried out using the first- order and second order derivative signal at 664 and 663 nm for BG and MB, respectively. The factors investigated were pH (2.5-8.5), adsorbent mass (0.006-0.030 g), sonication time (1-5 min) and initial MB and BG concentration (3-15 mg L-1). Five levels, which were low level, center point, upper level and two axillar points, were considered for each of the factors. The desirability function (DF: 0.9853) on the STATISTICA version 10.0 software showed that the optimum removal (99.832 and 99.423% for MB and BG, respectively) was obtained at pH 8.0, adsorbent mass 0.024 g, sonication time 4 min and 9 mg L-1 initial concentration for each dye. Besides, the results show that obtained data were adequately fitted into the second-order polynomial model, since the calculated model F value (172.96 and 96.35 for MB and BG, respectively) is higher than the critical F value. The values of coefficient of determination (0.9968 and 0.9943 for MB and BG, respectively) and adjusted coefficient of determination (0.9911 and 0.9840 for MB and BG, respectively) are close to 1, indicating a high correlation between the observed and the predicted values. The ultrasonic amplitude and adsorbent mass were found to be the most effective variable influencing the adsorption process. The adsorption equilibrium was well described by the Langmuir isotherm model with maximum adsorption capacity of 185.2 and 151.5 mg g-1 for MB and BG respectively on adsorbent. The results indicate that pseudo-second-order kinetic equation and intra-particle diffusion model can better describe the adsorption kinetics.