Adsorptive removal of methylene blue using water hyacinth roots: batch and column adsorption, kinetics, isotherm and ANN-GA modeling, scale-up, phytotoxicity, and disposal pathways.
Sinha S, Bar N, Roy S, Das SK
Phytoremediation
That murky blue water you've seen downstream from textile factories could be cleaned using the same invasive water hyacinth choking out native plants in local ponds, turning a double environmental problem into a two-for-one solution.
Researchers found that dried roots from water hyacinth, a fast-spreading aquatic plant often considered a pest, are surprisingly good at soaking up a common industrial dye called methylene blue from polluted water. By tuning simple conditions like water acidity and how much root material is used, they could pull out nearly all the dye. The same invasive plant that clogs waterways could be harvested and repurposed to clean up factory wastewater.
Key Findings
Dried water hyacinth roots achieved 96.5% removal of methylene blue under optimized conditions (pH 6, 0.2 g dose, 90-minute contact time).
Maximum adsorption capacity reached 154.54 mg/g, indicating highly efficient multilayer dye uptake confirmed by isotherm analysis.
Adsorption kinetics followed a pseudo-second-order model, and performance was further validated and predicted using ANN-GA (machine learning) modeling alongside scale-up and column studies.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Dried roots of water hyacinth — an invasive aquatic weed — can remove up to 96.5% of methylene blue dye from contaminated water, offering a cheap, sustainable solution to industrial dye pollution.
Abstract Preview
Methylene Blue (MB), a widely used cationic dye, is of particular concern due to its persistence and adverse effects on ecosystems and human health. This study used batch and fixed-bed column adsor...
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