The use of active carbon immobilised on chitosan beads for rb5 and bv10 dye removal from aqueous solutions

This paper presents the adsorption of dyes – the anionic Reactive Black 5 (RB5) and cationic Basic Violet 10 (BV10) dyes – on activated carbon (AC) immobilised on chitosan (CHs). The results were compared with the removal efficiency of RB5 and BV10 on the individual sorbents: chitosan beads and activated carbon. In this study, the sorption capacities of the sorbents, sorption pH and the point of zero charge (pHZPC) were determined. For the description of the obtained results, the Freundlich, Langmuir and double Langmuir models were used. The results show that the developed sorbent (CHs-AC) is effective for both types of dye (RB5 or BV10) over a broad pH range 4–10, which makes it a universal sorbent. The maximum sorption capacity of CHs-AC with RB5 was 639.8 mg/g, while for BV10 it was 50.7 mg/g.