Investigation and Optimization of Biosorbent Capacities of Some Plants Used in Daily Life

Abstract

In this study, sage, chamomile, and tarragon leaves, which are used as spices and consumed as beverages in daily life, were considered as different biosorbents for water purification by biosorption. At the same time, the biosorption processes were modeled using evolutionary computation-based automatic programming (AP) methods. The effects of initial dye concentration (10-200 mg/L), temperature (20-50 ⁰C), and contact time (0-120 min) on the biosorption processes were investigated. The highest biosorption capacity (49 mg/g) was obtained in tarragon biosorbent at a dye concentration of 200 mg/L after 120 min of contact time. The biosorption mechanism was found to follow Freundlich isotherm and pseudo-second order (PSO) reaction kinetics for all biosorbents. AP methods used the parameters of initial dye concentration, temperature, and contact time to model the biosorption capacity obtained from the experiments. According to the simulation results, the methods successfully modeled the biosorption capacities with R^2 values as high as 0.99 for each biosorbent. This study demonstrated that the effects of biosorption processes can be studied not only by experiments but also by simulations.