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vol-31BIOSORPTION OF BASIC BLUE NINE FROM WATER
SOLUTION BY MARINE ALGAE ULVA LACTUCA
AZZA KHALED, AMANY EL SIKAILY, OLA ABDELWAHAB AND
AHMED EL NEMR*
Environmental Division, National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries, Kayet Bay, ElAnfushy, Alexandria, Egypt
Keywords: Biosorption – basic dye – methylene blue – green algae – Ulva lactuca – wastewater
treatment – removal of dyes
ABSTRACT
Biosorption of colors is an important technology for treatment of different types of
industrial wastewaters containing dyes. The objective of this study was to convert green
algae Ulva lactuca to dye adsorbents for wastewater treatment. The important of commonly
available green algae U. lactuca was investigated as viable biomaterials for biological
treatment of synthetic basic blue 9 (5-Ch1oro-N,N,N’,N’-tetramethyl-5
4
-phenothiazine3,7-diamine) effluents. The results obtained from the batch experiments revealed the ability
of the green algae in removing the blue colour and was dependent on the dye concentration,
pH and algal biomass. Maximum dye colour removal was observed on the third day for all
the system conditions. We investigated the equilibrium and kinetics of adsorption as well as
the Langmuir and Freundlich equations were used to fit the equilibrium isotherm. The
adsorption isotherm of basic blue followed both of Langmuir and Freundlich model with a
correlation coefficient of ~0.96 to 0.99 and the adsorption kinetic follow the pseudosecond-order model (R
2
> 1.0). The maximum adsorption capacity was about 40.2 mg of
dye per one gram of dry green algae. However the adsorption capacity of U. lactuca for
methylene blue was equivalent to rice husk carbon (37.7 mg g
–1
) and Straw carbon (42.6
mg g
–1
) but higher than the bamboo dust carbon (7.2 mg g
–1
), coconut shell carbon (8.16
mg g
–1
) and groundnut shell carbon (7.5 mg g
–1
) (Kannan and Meenakshi. 2001). This
study demonstrated that the green algae could be used as an effective biosorbent for the
treatment of dye containing wastewater streams.
