Amalina Amirah Abu Bakar, Nurnadirah Akmal Sukri, Nurhidayati Mad Daud, Khairul Ammar Muhammad Ali and Asmawati Che Hasan
Keywords: low-cost adsorbent, rubber seed pod, batik ındustrial wastewater, methylene blue, batch study
Abstract: Malaysia is a nation facing massive physical development for better economic growth. In the other hand, Malaysia has difficulty in managing massive discharges of industrial wastewater into the water body instantaneously, causing pollution to the water bodies. About 54 m3 were discharge to the water body during dye process in small batik textile industry. Improperly disposed the wastewater to the catchment area, will cause the water pollution and consequently will endanger human health and the environment. Dye is a colour pollutant that is not significantly metabolized by the liver, instead quickly filtered out by the kidneys which will endanger the human health. Therefore, it is necessary to make sure the effluent contained dye were treated first before released it to the environment. Recently, the use of waste materials gained attention among researchers to study the effectiveness of adsorbent media in colour treatment. One of the low-cost adsorbents that has potential to be use as carbon is rubber seed pod (RUBSPOD). This study will focus on the effectiveness of RUBSPOD as carbon to adsorb methylene blue (MB) as a synthetic batik industrial textile wastewater in different variable conditions. A series of batch equilibrium adsorption experiments were performed to determine the effect of varying doses of 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 and 3 g, contact periods of 30, 60, 90, 120, 150 and 180 minutes, and pH values of 3, 5, 6, 7 and 9 at 150 rpm of agitation speed. The concentration of MB in the sample was measured by the Atomic Absorption Spectrometer. As a result, at optimum dosage of 0.6 g and contact time of 60 minutes in pH 3, RUBSPOD in the form of carbon is able to eliminate more than 90% of colour emission. Therefore, RUBSPOD has the ability to reduce colour pollution.
