Evaluación de la eficiencia de adsorción de la cáscara de coco para la remoción del colorante amarillo ocaso FCF en aguas de un proceso industrial simulado

Abstract

There are over 100,000 different types of dyes used in various industries around the world, including the food, cosmetics, textile, and pharmaceutical industries. This wide range of applications makes dyes compounds of significant interest from a public health perspective, as their release into surface water bodies through industrial discharges can have detrimental effects on the environment. One such dye of concern is Sunset Yellow FCF, which is extensively used in food products, preservatives, liqueurs, cosmetics, confectionery, soft drinks, and a variety of other items. Due to its complex chemical composition, Sunset Yellow FCF has been classified as a toxic substance that poses a threat to public health, particularly in terms of its impact on water quality and overall health (Kong et al., 2017). In response to these concerns, environmentally sustainable technologies such as bioadsorption have emerged as promising alternatives for the treatment of wastewater contaminated with dyes of this type. Bioadsorption offers several advantages over conventional treatment methods, including reduced costs and the utilization of agricultural waste materials (e.g., fruit and vegetable peels, leaves) as adsorbents. The present study aims to evaluate the bioadsorption efficiency of coconut husk in removing Sunset Yellow FCF dye from simulated industrial wastewater. Coconut husk, a readily available and low-cost agricultural waste material, holds potential as an effective bioadsorbent for dye removal due to its high surface area and presence of functional groups that can bind to dye molecules. The aforementioned approach involves standardizing the analytical technique for UV spectrophotometric determination of the dye, followed by a series of batch tests under varying conditions of temperature, pH, agitation time, adsorbent material, particle size, and dye concentration. These tests aim to identify the optimal parameters for the bioadsorption of the target dye. Subsequently, the batch test with the highest dye removal efficiency is employed in a continuous fixed-bed column experiment. Coconut husk was utilized as the bioadsorbent in this study, achieving a remarkable dye removal percentage of 99.002% in batch tests. This exceptional performance was further validated in the continuous fixed-bed column experiment, where a dye removal efficiency of 98.021% was obtained. Finally, the adsorption capacity of coconut husk was further evaluated using a simulated wastewater solution representative of a canned food product. This experiment yielded promising results, with a dye removal efficiency of 97.914%. This outcome strongly supports the potential of coconut husk as an effective bioadsorbent for dye removal from various industrial wastewater streams.