Utilization of Effective Microorganisms based water hyacinth compost as biosorbent for the removal of basic dyes

The water hyacinth plants are renewable natural biomass, proliferate ubiquitously, and abundant in water bodies often posing environmental nuisances. To overcome this problem, a novel approach that utilizes water hyacinth plant has to be arrived. This research work mainly deals with application of low cost, non-conventional, newly developed novel biomaterial, Effective Microorganisms (EM) based Water Hyacinth Compost as biosorbent for the removal of basic dyes from aqueous solution. Biosorption of basic dyes like Methylene Blue (MB), Malachite Green (MG), and Basic Blue 41 (BB41) was investigated using a biosorbent of EM based Water Hyacinth Compost. The biosorbent material was analyzed for physico-chemical composition such as pH, moisture content, organic carbon, nitrogen, etc. and also the biosorbent was characterized before and after adsorption using FTIR and SEM. The batch study was performed to optimize the operational parameters such as pH, biosorbent dosage, biosorbent particle size, and initial dye concentration. The maximum experimental removal efficiency of adsorbent was obtained as 98.9, 98.4, and 89.1% for MB, MG, and BB41, respectively. Two and three parameter adsorption models were used for the mathematical description of the biosorption equilibrium and isotherm parameters were evaluated. The study confirms that the EM-based water hyacinth compost can be used as an effective biosorbent for the removal of basic dyes.