ABSTRACT
234Activated carbon was prepared from karanja seed shell. Chemical activation of precursor was done using sulfuric acid as an activating agent. Adsorption capacity of prepared activated carbon was examined by adsorption of methylene blue. Optimization of adsorption capacity of the prepared activated carbon was studied using response surface methodology (RSM). In RSM, central composite design (CCD) was used to find the quadratic response surface equation. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) of the quadratic model suggested that the predicted values were in good agreement with the experimental data. A model equation for predicting the response was formulated which can be successfully adopted in industry to maximize the response of the process or operation. The experimental results indicated that the optimal conditions for the maximum adsorption capacity were found to be 125 mg/L and 210.229 min for methylene blue concentration and contact time, respectively. Under these conditions, the maximum adsorption capacity was found to be 31.2754 mg/g.
