Ultrasonically assisted removal of Congo Red, Phloxine B and Fast green FCF in ternary mixture using novel nanocomposite following their simultaneous analysis by derivative spectrophotometry.

In this study dependency of simultaneous adsorption of Congo Red (CR), Phloxine B (BP) and Fast green FCF (FG) onto CuS/ZnS nanocomposites loaded on activated carbon (CuS/ZnS-NCs-AC) to pH, adsorbent mass, sonication time and initial dyes concentration were modeled and optimized, while CuS/ZnS-NCs-AC was identified by XRD, FESEM and EDS analysis. CR, PB and FG concentration determination were undertaken by first and second order derivative spectrophotometry in ternary mixture. According to central composite design (CCD) based on desirability function (DF), the best experimental conditions was set as pH 6.0, 0.02g CuS/ZnS-NCs-AC, 5min sonication time, 15mgL-1 for PB and 10mgL-1 for other dyes. Conduction of experiments to above conditions lead to highest dyes removal efficiency of 99.72, 98.8 and 98.17 for CR, PB and FG, respectively. The adsorption data efficiently fitted by Langmuir isotherm model, while the order of maximum adsorption capacity (Qmax) for PB (128.21mgg-1)>CR (88.57mgg-1)>FG (73.40mgg-1) is related to their different structure and charges. Kinetics of process was efficiently explained according to pseudo-second-order kinetic in cooperation of Weber and Morris based on intraparticle diffusion.