LAUSR

In the current investigation, a comparison of mitigation of industrial-grade, Dispersive Dark Red (DDR) (93.55%), Disperse Orange (DO) (93.48%) and lab grade, Malachite Green (MG) (95.25%), and Congo Red (CR) (97.02%) dyes using biosorptive ability of wheat bran (WB) (efficient, economical, readily available and environment-friendly adsorbent) has been reported. WB obtained from wheat (a type of grass plant, a major human food crop), is a waste product generated from agricultural practices. The effect of different variables, namely, pH, adsorbate concentration, incubation time, adsorbent dosage, and temperature were investigated to determine the optimal parameters for dye sorption. The influence of the chemical modification of the sorbent on its adsorption capacity was also tested, which showed a positive effect of acid modification towards acidic dyes and vice versa towards the basic dyes. For all the dyes, in comparison to the Freundlich model, nonlinear Langmuir model of isotherm has given better conformity, with maximum adsorption capacity of 11.14 (MG), 15.17 (CR), 12.34 (DDR), and 15.98 (DO) mg/g at their respective optimal temperature following a pseudo-second-order kinetic model for adsorption, proving it to be dependent on adsorption capacity of WB. The findings clearly suggest WB to be an efficient dye remover from aqueous solutions and can, thus, be well explored for dye pollution reduction in industrial wastewaters.