Full Length Research Paper

Effect of chitosan biopolymer and UV/TiO₂ method for the de-coloration of acid blue 40 simulated textile wastewater

Sheau-Ming Chen¹*, Ming-Shien Yen² and Yun-Hwei Shen¹

¹Department of Resources Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan.

²Department of Polymer Materials, Kun Shan University, Yung-Kang 710, Taiwan.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: n4893117@mail.ncku.edu.tw or n4893117@yam.com.

Accepted 18 May, 2010

   Abstract

The purpose for this study is to de-color C.I. Acid Blue 40 simulated textile wastewater using chitosan and UV/TiO₂ system. The methodology is to use chitosan biopolymer and UV/TiO₂ to degrade textile wastewater and to measure the color removal by UV-visible spectrophotometer. The operational parameters are chitosan, TiO₂, pH and reaction time. From the laboratory investigations, different efficiencies were observed according to different removal operating levels. Single chitosan of 2500 ppm dose was used to remove Acid Blue 40 textile wastewater and to obtain a better efficiency. TiO₂ alone with UV light was also used with the dose of 2500 ppm to obtain a better efficiency. In acidity, both chitosan and TiO₂ obtain better efficiencies under pH 4 operational condition. The best combination for UV/TiO₂ system to de-color the 50 ppm Acid Blue 40 textile wastewater was TiO₂ 2500 ppm concentration with UV illumination at pH 4. The result shows that the de-colorization efficiency reached 98.8% elimination after 210 min of reaction time.

Key words: Chitosan biopolymer, UV/TiO₂, Acid Blue 40, textile wastewater, spectrophotometer.