Study of methylene blue dye elimination from water using polyaniline (PANI) and PANI/SiO ₂ composite

Conducting polymeric composites have attracted great attention over the last years because of their potential uses in chemical, electronic and optical devices, and as catalysts as well as in adsorption processes. Chemical synthesis of polyaniline (PANI) and polyaniline-SiO ₂ composite and their adsorptive performance were reported in the present work. These materials were prepared and evaluated for their methylene blue (MB) dye adsorption characteristics from aqueous solution. Adsorption equilibrium kinetic and thermodynamic experiments of MB onto PANI and PANI/SiO ₂ were studied. The effects of initial dye concentration, contact time and temperature on the adsorption capacity of PANI/SiO ₂ for MB have been investigated. The pseudo-first order and pseudo-second order kinetic models were used to describe the kinetic data. It was found that adsorption kinetics followed the pseudo-second order at all of the studied temperatures. The Langmuir, Freundlich and Dubinin Raduschkevich adsorption models were used for the mathematical description and the HyperChem v8 software was exploited to propose a possible mechanism of the adsorption process.