Enhanced removal of methyl orange on exfoliated montmorillonite/chitosan gel in presence of methylene blue

In this work, self-assembled gels were prepared with exfoliated montmorillonite and chitosan (EMCG) as the adsorbent for removing methyl orange (MO) from water in absence and presence of methylene blue (MB). Several techniques including scanning electron microscope (SEM), zeta potential, fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were used for the characterization of the EMCG before and after removal of MO. The EMCG performed well in the removal of MO attributing to the electrostatic attraction, cation exchange and hydrogen bond. The adsorption behaviors were followed pseudo-second-order and Langmuir isotherm. More surprisingly, the maximum adsorption capacity of MO was obviously enhanced in the presence of MB that it increased from 545 mg g-1 (absence of MB) to 1060 mg g-1 with the shielding effect of MB on EMCG which allowed MO and MB to alternately arrange at the adsorption sites. This finding of the synergistic effect between the two dyes on the proposed composite opens up new vistas to imagine the enhanced purification of the wastewater with multiple dyes co-existed using the multifunctional adsorbents.