Removal of phenol from aqueous solution by modified rice straw as biosorbent

Abstract

This project studies the capability of modified rice straw as biosorbent for the removal of phenol in aqueous solution. The chemical treatment such as alkaline treatment was applied on rice straw. The effectiveness of phenol removal was investigated between sodium hydroxide, NaOH-treated and untreated rice straw. The rice straw was placed in 6 different Erlenmeyer flasks containing 50 mL of 80 mg/L phenol. The samples were incubated at 25 oC with rotation speed of 150 rpm for 3 hours. Absorbance (A) of each samples were measured and calculated as the final concentration of phenol. The effects of three parameters; initial phenol concentration, dosage (rice straw) amount and temperature were tested by both NaOH-treated and untreated rice straw. The NaOH-treated rice straw has a better performance on phenol removal. The highest percentage of removal of 87.8 %, 84.1 % and 84.4 % occurred at initial phenol concentration of 80 mg/L, rice straw dosage of 0.2 g and temperature at 30 oC, respectively. For the optimization using RSM, the predicted optimized parameters were at initial phenol concentration of 80 mg/L, rice straw dosage of 0.2 g and temperature at 30 oC, which results in 89.2 % removal and the experimental value was 89.3 %