Adsorption of Methylene Blue Dye using Functionalized Granular Activated Carbon

Urbanization and rapid industrial development in recent years have created a major threat to the environment especially water pollution. Pollution from wastewater not only depreciates land values; it also increases municipal costs for wastewater treatment and causes harm to biological and human health. Industries such as ceramic, printing, plastic and paper use dyes in their coloring process and these dyes are usually disposed to streams, ponds, lakes and river which then cause water pollution. Not only that the dyes can be very toxic even at low concentration, they are also generally non-biodegradable and difficult to be removed using conventional biological treatment. Many researches have been done on ways to treat wastewater effectively namely membrane separation, aerobic and anaerobic degradation using various microorganisms, chemical oxidation, coagulation and flocculation, adsorption using various kinds of adsorbents and reverse osmosis. However, most of the current wastewater treatment techniques are selective and expensive. Adsorption process has been identified as the most feasible wastewater treatment technique as it is cheap economically, simplicity in design and has the ability to adsorb a wide range of both organic and inorganic pollutants. With that, this project aims to study methylene blue dye removal using functionalized granular activated carbon.