Acrylic acid grafted cellulosic Luffa cylindrical fiber for the removal of dye and metal ions.

Acrylic acid grafted cellulosic Luffa cylindrical fiber was utilized for the removal of methylene blue and metal ions from the water system using batch process. The grafted sample used was found to demonstrate a maximum grafting efficiency of 90.8% under concentrations of 0.432×10(-3) mol/L, temperature of 35 °C, time of 60 min and pH of 7.0 respectively. The remarkable improvement in thermal properties of the grafted sample was observed. The formation of new bands in FTIR spectra of grafted sample confirmed the grafting of acrylic acid onto the cellulosic fiber. The maximum adsorption capacity of dye onto adsorbent was observed to be 62.15 mg g(-1) at 175 min. A maximum removal of 45.8% was observed for Mg(2+) as compared to other metal ions. High values of correlation coefficient for methylene blue (0.995) and metal ions such as Mg(2+) (0.996), Ni(2+) (0.995), Zn(2+) (0.996) confirmed the applicability of Langmuir isotherm that assumed a monolayer coverage and uniform activity distribution on the adsorbent surface.