Application of Factorial Design in the Analysis of Factors Influencing Textile Dye Adsorption on Activated Carbon

In this study, the use of factorial design software is applied to evaluate efficiently factors influencing the adsorption capacity of activated carbon in treating textile dyes. Activated carbon is usually used to treat wastewater effluents from textile industries in order to remove textile dyes before discharge into the environment. Most treatment facilities, particularly large industrial or wastewater treatment facilities use continuous flow reactors or packed columns to treat the dye. Due to the limited residence time in these types of reactors, adsorption equilibrium is not necessarily reached, and the absorption rate becomes an important factor in this treatment process. Other factors influencing the capacity of activated carbon used in this study included pH, ionic strength, the type of the dye and the type of carbon. In this study, we use Minitab software to design an experiment to evaluate collectively these factors, each under various levels (33 × 22 factorial design). The novelty of this study is the utilization of factorial design in the experimental approach.