Melanoidin removal from molasses wastewater using graphene oxide nanosheets

Melanoidins are dark brown recalcitrant pollutants found in the molasses-based distillery effluents. In this study, graphene oxide nanosheets (GONs) were successfully synthesized to remove melanoidin for the first time. Characterization techniques, such as SEM, TEM, XRD, FT-IR, Raman, TGA, AFM and XPS were used to investigate the adsorbent properties. The highest adsorption capacity for real industrial and synthetic melanoidin solutions at optimum conditions were 18.31 and 18.02 g g−1, respectively. The adsorption data were revealed to fit well in pseudo-second-order kinetics and Langmuir isotherm models. Findings from this study suggested that the GONs could be highly effective for melanoidin removal from molasses wastewater.