use of the cactus cladodes mucilage (opuntia ficus indica) as an eco-friendly flocculants: process development and optimization using stastical analysis

the opuntia ficus indica mucilage was an abundant and a low cost product. in the presentpaper, it was tested as an eco-friendly flocculants for textile waste water treatment. its performance asflocculants in decolorization, cod removal and turbidity abatement was checked. the natural product wascharacterized using uv-vis and infra-red spectroscopy. the study of the effect, followed by an optimizationand modeling analysis, of some experimental parameters on the coagulation-flocculation performance, usingcactus mucilage combined with aluminum sulfate (as a coagulant), showed that the best conditions for flocculationprocess were given for a ph equal to 7.25, flocculants dose of about 40 mg/l, flocculation mixing speed ofabout 30rpm and flocculation mixing time of about 11min. this gives a decolorization equal to 99.84%, codremoval of about 88.76% and turbidity abatement of about 91.66%. the comparison between the flocculationperformance of commercial flocculants and the bio-flocculants agent exhibited that the latter has the highestpollution removal.