Abstract

In terms of health, dyes have carcinogenic, mutagenic and toxic properties and can have adverse effects on health and the environment. Therefore, sewage containing to dyes must be purified before being discharged into the environment. The current study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of Alcea rosea root extract in Disperse red 60 and Reactive blue 19 dyes removal from synthetic sewage. In this study, the effect of different indices including pH (5-11), Alcea rosea concentration (50-300mg/L) and initial dye concentration (10-80mg/L) was investigated. During the tests, the coagulant was stirred with rapid mixing at a speed of 250rpm for 2min. In the following, the speed (30-60rpm) and the time (10-25min) were used for slow mixing and after mixing the effect of settling time (10-60min) and temperature (20-70) on removal efficiency of Disperse and Reactive dyes was investigated. The results showed that the maximum of removal efficiency of Disperse and Reactive dyes in optimum conditions including (pH=11, coagulant concentration=200 and 250mg/L, dye concentration 40 and 20mg/L, speed 60rpm, during 15min with settling time 60min and temperature 60 degrees C obtained 86 and 68, respectively. According to the result, the Alcea rosea coagulant has the best ability in removing dyes from aqueous solutions and sewage, especially Disperse dyes. Disperse dye is much eliminated in the coagulation process due to its lower solubility, higher suspending materials and less required solved chemical oxygen demand to the total chemical oxygen demand (SCOD/TCOD).