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Removal Of Methylene Blue Dye From Aqueous Solution By Polyvinyl Alcohol/Activated

Carbon Nanocomposite Hydrogel

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Removal Of Methylene Blue Dye From Aqueous Solution By Polyvinyl Alcohol/Activated

Carbon Nanocomposite Hydrogel

According to the growth of humankind's society, the development of agriculture,

industries, and cities is increasing consistently. Besides that, the need for purified and freshwater

is growing day by day. Based on UNESCO's published report, agricultural, industrial, and urban

sections consume 70%, 22%, and 8% of the freshwater, respectively, which causes a tremendous

volume of pollutions. However, industrial pollution, due to toxic and non-biodegradable

materials like radioactive components, heavy metal ions, and dyes, is toxic and dangerous.

Pollution caused by synthesis dyes is one of the major concerns and must get treated

before releasing it into nature. Based on studies, it assumed that more than 100000 commercial-

industrial types of dyes at the rate of 7105-106 tons per year and it has been estimated 10-15%

of produced dyes get into wastewaters. Synthesis dyes have stable and complex aromatic

structures and resist oxidation and biological degradation. Dyes accumulation in wastewaters

cause manifold problems like genetic mutation, concern, kidney, liver, brain dysfunction, and

central neural system demolition. Wastewater treatment is very necessary to prevent these

defections from dyes.

Some physical, chemical, and biological treatments are essential for removing dyes from

wastewater. These include electroflotation, physical-chemical flocculation, membrane filtration,

coagulation, electrokinetic. Also, coagulation electrochemical destruction, ion exchange,

irradiation, precipitation, ozonation, and kotax treatment using activated carbon are useful in

water treatment. Nevertheless, these methods are useless due to their high cost and covering the

limited range of dyes.

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Adsorption gets introduced as an effective method for eliminating dyes from wastewater.

This method is a stable and powerful process to access the adsorbent easily and maintain a wide

range of dyes, activated carbon (AC) is the most well-known adsorbate. AC is a considerable

material for adsorbing an expanded range of pollutions because of high porosity,

physicochemical stability, high adsorption capacity, high surface reactive degree, and large

specific area. However, due to its expensive preparation cost and related problems for separating

in powder state from solutions, this worthy material is limited.

On the other hand, superabsorbent polymer hydrogels have attracted researchers’

attention in recent decades. Hydrogels, because of their three-dimensional networks and

hydrophilic groups' existence on their structures (-OH, -COOH, -NH2, -CONH2, -SO3H),

adsorb water, saline solution, and physiological liquid 10-1000 times more than their weight.

Meanwhile, hydrogels' adsorption capacity and swelling behavior change when exposed to

environments with different conditions; these polymers get known as smart gels because of this

point. There are numerous procedures for preparing hydrogels, in which most of them use cross-

linkers and initiators. These materials are harmful and toxic, but hydrogels are produced without

mentioned materials by the freezing-thawing process.

Ironically, low mechanical strength, low absorbing capacity, low thermal resistance, low

gel strength, and high producing cost restrict their use on a commercial scale. Polyvinyl alcohol

(PVA) hydrogel is a well-known polymer hydrogel used as a wound dressing in wound

management because of its good biocompatibility. Oxygen carrying properties, good mechanical

strength, and chemical resistance prove their suitability for the water treatment process. Still,

high production costs and low absorbing capacity are obstacles to using this substance as an
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adsorbent. To overcome these defects, some inorganic additivities like montmorillonite,

bentonite, ferrite, carbon nanotube, etc., can be added to hydrogels' structure.

In this research, PVA and AC nanocomposite hydrogel to investigate features and

methylene blue removing were produced. PVA/AC nanocomposite hydrogel got prepared by the

freezing-thawing method. In this work, prepared hydrogels were used for methylene blue (MB)

dye removal from an aqueous solution. Taguchi design of experiments was employed to find the

optimum condition for dye removal. Table 1 shows the design of the experiment for removing

MB. The hydrogel samples were named PAX, ‘P’ and ‘A’ are the first letters of PVA and AC,

and X is the dry percentage of activated carbon. The hydrogels I X-ray diffraction (XRD), field

emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET), Fourier-

transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and dynamic light scattering (DLS) tests. The impact of

AC loading levels, temperature, pH, and MB concentration levels for swelling behavior and MB

removal were investigated and compared.