Kinetics and Thermodynamic Studies for Removal of Trypan Blue and Methylene Blue from Water Using Nano Clay Filled Composite of HTAB and PEG and its Antibacterial Activity

This work describes the preparation of new eco-friendly adsorbents with a simple method. At first, Montmorillonite (MMT) was modified with surfactant HTAB (MMT@HTAB) and then with polymer PEG (MMT@HTAB@PEG). The as-synthesized materials were characterized by several characterization techniques, including XRD, FTIR, SEM, TEM, TGA, N2 adsorption/desorption isotherm analysis by the BET method and zeta potential measurement then evaluated as adsorbents for removal of both methylene blue (MB) as a cationic dye and trypan blue (TB) as the anionic dye from aqueous solution under different contact time, dye concentration, temperature, and pH. The obtained results confirm the intercalation of surfactant within the clay layers, while the obtained nanocomposite showed different morphologies and structures in which the exfoliated and intercalated forms were obtained. The maximum adsorption capacity of TB and MB was found to be 190.81 and 237.22 mg/g, respectively, with MMT@HTAB@PEG adsorbent in an initial concentration of 100 mg/L at alkaline pH in 35 min and a temperature of 25 °C. The adsorption kinetics of TB and MB on MMT@HTAB@PEG was best fitted by the pseudo-second order model, and the isotherms results reveals better consistency of the Langmuir model, indicating that the adsorption is favorable and in the form of multilayers. The thermodynamic study showed that the adsorption processes of TB and MB by the both MMT@HTAB and MMT@HTAB@PEG adsorbents occur in an autonomous way and the temperature has not a significant effect on the adsorption capacity of TB and MB dyes. In addition, MMT@HTAB showed good antibacterial activity against both Escherichia coli (ATCC 8739) and Micrococcus luteus (ATCC 9341) bacteria compared to MMT@HTAB@PEG. The broadcast area was found to be 6 and 5 mm in Escherichia coli (ATCC 8739) and Micrococcus luteus (ATCC 9341), respectively. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.