ZnS:Cu nanoparticles loaded on activated carbon as novel adsorbent for kinetic, thermodynamic and isotherm studies of Reactive Orange 12 and Direct yellow 12 adsorption.

The objective of this work is the study of adsorption of Reactive Orange 12 (RO-12) and Direct yellow 12 (DY 12) by zinc sulfide:copper (ZnS-Cu-NP-AC) nanoparticles loaded on activated carbon. This new material with high efficiency in a routine manner was synthesized in our laboratory and its surface properties viz surface area, pore volume and functional groups was characterized with different techniques such FT-IR, SEM, and BET analysis. Generally, in batch adsorption procedure variables including amount of adsorbent, initial dyes concentration, contact time, temperature on dyes removal percentage has great effect on removal percentage that their influence was optimized. The kinetic of proposed adsorption processes efficiently followed, pseudo-second-order, and intra-particle diffusion kinetic models. The equilibrium data the removal strongly follow Langmuir monolayer adsorption with high adsorption capacity in short time. This novel adsorbent by small amount (0.08 g) really is applicable for removal of high amount of both dyes (RO 12 and DY 12) in short time (<20 min). Based on the calculated thermodynamic parameters such as enthalpy (ΔH), entropy (ΔS), activation energy (Ea), sticking probability (S*) and Gibb's free energy changes (ΔG), it is noticeable that the sorption of both dyes onto ZnS:Cu-AC was spontaneous and endothermic process. At optimum values all variables the effect of contact time on adsorption was investigated and the dependency of adsorption data to different kinetic model such as pseudo-first-order, pseudo-second-order, Elovich and intra-particle diffusion was assessed and it was found that the removal processes follow pseudo second order kinetics and interparticle diffusion mechanism.