Kinetic and thermodynamic studies of the removal of murexide from aqueous solutions on to activated carbon

The objective of this study was to assess the adsorption potential of activated carbon (AC) asan adsorbent for the removal of Murexide (Mu) from aqueous solutions. The influence of variablesparameters including pH, amount of adsorbent, sieve size of adsorbent, temperature and contact timeon Mu removal was studied. Following optimization of variables, the relation between concentrations ofdye remained in aqueous and adsorbent has been evaluated using various adsorption isotherm modelslike, Langmuir, Freundlich, Tempkin, Harkins-Jura and Dubinin–Radushkevich. Thermodynamicparameters such as enthalpy (ΔH◦), and, entropy (ΔS◦), activation energy (Ea), stickingprobability (S*), and Gibb’s free energy changes (ΔG◦) were also calculated. It was found fromevaluated different thermodynamic parameters, viz., ΔH◦, ΔS◦ and ΔG◦ that the adsorption of Muby AC was feasible, spontaneous and endothermic process. The kinetic studies suggest that the allprocess following pseudo second order kinetics and involvement of intera- particle diffusion mechanism.The results indicated that the intraparticle diffusion also is the rate limiting factor.