article · Applied Water Science
Agricultural residues from date palms have been converted into palm peat, a spongy and porous lignocellulosic material evaluated for wastewater treatment. The material has a surface area of 16 square metres per gram and contains active surface functional groups that bind methylene blue dye. Under ambient room temperature and neutral conditions, the adsorbent removed over 68 percent of the dye within 90 minutes, with performance reaching nearly 98 percent under statistically optimised operational conditions. The material retained stable performance across five operational cycles. Testing in real textile wastewater demonstrated its practical capability, achieving 71.5 percent methylene blue removal alongside a 48.16 percent reduction in total organic carbon. Dye capture relies on multiple physical and chemical mechanisms, functioning effectively without requiring high-energy heating inputs.
Textile manufacturing generates wastewater containing synthetic dyes and organic contaminants that harm natural aquatic systems. Using agricultural waste such as date palm residues to purify effluent provides a sustainable way to clean industrial water while repurposing abundant farm by-products into functional filtration tools.
This work is an applied and tested laboratory validation with initial trials on real textile effluent. It could enable low-cost, bio-based filtration media for industrial wastewater treatment facilities and textile manufacturers seeking to capture dyes and lower organic carbon loads. Moving closer to commercial application will require scaling up production of the adsorbent and testing in continuous-flow industrial systems.
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Abstract Palm Peat (PP), the world’s first rich lignocellulosic medium derived from date palm agricultural residues, has not been previously explored for environmental purification. This study evaluates PP's performance in adsorbing methylene blue (MB) dye. PP is characterized by a spongy, porous structure with a surface area of 16 m 2 /g. It possesses a significant carbon and oxygen composition and features active surface functional groups. Under conditions of 30 mg/L initial MB concentration, 1 g/L PP dose, T = 30 °C, pH 7, and 900 rpm stirring speed, PP achieved a 68.26% MB removal efficiency within 90 min. Although higher temperatures enhanced MB removal efficiencies, room temperature (30 °C) was chosen for subsequent experiments to assess adsorption performance under ambient conditions and minimize energy consumption. Stirring speeds exceeding 900 rpm reduce MB removal efficiency, likely due to shear forces disrupting the interaction between MB molecules and PP or causing desorption of previously adsorbed dye molecules. Response surface methodology combined with a central composite design was employed to optimize the initial MB concentration, PP dosage, and solution pH. Under the optimum conditions, PP achieved 97.89% MB removal. PP exhibited strong stability over five adsorption cycles. Adsorption occurs via π-π stacking, hydrogen bonding, hydrophobic-hydrophobic interactions, and electrostatic interaction with the process being endothermic and following the Langmuir isotherm model and pseudo-second-order kinetic model. The adsorption efficiency studies across different water matrices revealed the lowest degradation rate in the drain water matrix. PP achieved 71.5% MB removal and 48.16% TOC removal from real textile wastewater.
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DOI: 10.1007/s13201-025-02363-y
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