Synthesis, characterization and applications of palm fatty acid modified eggshell membrane as new adsorbent for removal of toxic alizarin red dye

Abstract

Eggshell membrane (ESM) is a membrane enriched with protein located between egg shell (ES) and white egg. Egg residues can act as low-cost absorbers. Free fatty acids (FFAs) from waste palm cooking oil become a potential material to alter the structure of eggshell membrane. Free fatty acids filtered from the waste cooking oils were used to modify the ESM. The type of dye that was used in this study is an anionic dye which is Alizarin Red dye. The characterization of ESM@FFAs-WPCO was analyzed using FT-IR and SEM to investigate the surface characterization and to determine the particles shape respectively. The ability of ESM@FFAs-WPCO as absorbent has been tested in several parameter such as pH, adsorbent dosage and contact time. The percentage removal of Alizarin Red was at optimum in pH 2 for 81% dye removal. The optimum adsorbent dosage was at 20 mg for 93% removal of dye. For contact time parameter, the optimum contact time was after 40 minutes for 93% removal of dye. The adsorption kinetics fit the pseudo-second order reaction and isotherms favored the Freundlich isotherm models as R2 was 0.99 and 0.98 respectively.