Removal of the industrial azo dye crystal violet using a natural clay: Characterization, kinetic modeling, and RSM optimization.

Natural clay (NC) was employed as a natural adsorbent for the elimination of an azo dye Crystal Violet (CV) from aqueous media. The characterization of the clay was performed by X-ray diffractometry (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) equipped with an X-ray energy dispersion spectrometer (EDS) and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) specific surface area analysis. The Box-Behnken design (BBD) was used as a powerful tool to determine the stationary points of the main independent factors: initial CV concentration, initial pH, temperature, and adsorbent dose on the adsorption efficiency. The significance and adequacy of the model were investigated using analysis of variance (ANOVA). The obtained results indicated an optimal dye removal of 99.1% at pH = 3, initial CV concentration of 11.767 mg/L, adsorbent load of 3.075 g/L, and T = 298.0 K. The kinetic study was evaluated using three models: a pseudo-first-order (PFO), a pseudo-second-order (PSO), and an intraparticle diffusion model. The observed kinetics is in excellent agreement with the PSO kinetic model. Therefore, both isotherms Langmuir and Freundlich fitted well the adsorption equilibrium data. The thermodynamic study revealed that the main parameters including (ΔG°, ΔH°, and ΔS°) indicated that the adsorption of CV onto NC was an endothermic and spontaneous process.