Abstract
The present work focused on the performance of Polyaniline/SiO2 nanocomposite for removing Amido Black 10B dye from aqueous solution. The effect of different variables, such as adsorption time, the mass of adsorbent, solution pH and initial dye concentration was studied and also was optimized by an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) method. Lagergren, pseudo-second order, Intra-particle Diffusion, Elovich and Boyd models were tested to track the kinetics of the adsorption process. The experimental data were fitted to different two-parameter, and three-parameter isotherm models, namely, Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin, D-R, Hill, Sips and Redlich-Peterson models, and their validity was examined. The results showed that the dye adsorption process was well described by Redlich-Peterson isotherm model. Thermodynamic studies revealed that the adsorption of Amido Black 10B onto Polyaniline/SiO2 nanocomposite was endothermic. The comparison of the adsorption efficiencies obtained by the ANN SiO2 model and the experimental data evidenced that the ANN model could estimate the behavior of the Amido Black 10B dye adsorption process under various conditions. (c) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.