Acid Black 172 dye adsorption from aqueous solution by hydroxyapatite as low-cost adsorbent

The Acid Black 172 dye adsorption on the uncalcined hydroxyapatite nanopowder was investigated. The hydroxyapatite prepared by wet coprecipitation method has high specific surface area of 325 m²/g and crystal sizes smaller than 70 nm. The batch adsorption experiments revealed that under the optimum adsorption conditions (pH 3, hydroxyapatite dosage 2 g/L, initial dye concentration 400 mg/L and temperature 20 °C) the dye removal efficiency was 95.78% after 1 h of adsorption. The adsorption kinetics was best described by the pseudo-second order kinetic model. The intraparticle diffusion model shows that intraparticle diffusion is not the sole rate-limiting step; the mass transfer also influences the adsorption process in its initial period. The Langmuir isotherm model best represented the equilibrium experimental data, and the maximum adsorption capacity (q _m ) was 312.5 mg/g.