Novel modified magnetic mesopouros silica for rapid and efficient removal of methylene blue dye from aqueous media

Abstract

This reaserch aims at functionalizing magnetic mesoporous silica with methacrylic acid-3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (Fe3O4@MCM-41@MAA-APTES) applied for removal of methylene blue from aqueous solution. Several variables (such as pH, dye concentration, adsorbent amount and contact time) have been investigated. Under optimum conditions, maximum capacity of 87.71 mg g-1 of MB was obtained for the sorbent. The magnetic mesoporous silica was characterized by SEM, FT-IR, XRD and VSM analyses. The adsorption isotherms were also studied for the sorbent and Langmuir model was found to be more applicable in interpreting MB adsorption on the magnetic nanocomposite silica. The pseudo-second order kinetic model adequately described the kinetic data.