NEW KNOWLEDGE ON THE APPLICATION OF ACTIVATED CARBONS PROVIDED FROM COTTON WASTE OF THE READY-TO-WEAR GARMENTS

Activated carbon and their use have been known to mankind for 3,500 years. Industrial production began during the First World War and was focused on water treatment, and today activated carbon are widely used in nanotechnology, electronics, metallurgy, electrochemistry, catalysis, etc. They are widely used in powder or granular form as the most efficient adsorbent for the removal of flavor, odor, dye, soluble organic matter, synthetic substances and heavy metals from the aqueous phase. The basic unit of activated carbon is microcrystalline, consisting of the level of connected six-membered carbon rings and many vacancies, defects and impurities between them. The functional groups of heteroatoms on the edges of the aromatic layers disturb the parallel orientation of the level inherent to the graphite and provide the so-called turbostratic structure, characteristic of activated carbon. The most common heteroatoms in the structure are hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus, and the functional groups they form, determine the reactivity in adsorption, catalytic and electrochemical processes. Activated carbons use the adsorption process to eliminate many undesirable substances, ranging from heavy metals, pesticides to different types of dyes. Adsorption in the broadest sense denotes a change in the concentration of some of the components at the boundary surface of the heterogeneous phase phase. The phase on the surface of which increases the concentration of some of the components, is called the adsorbent, and the adsorbed component is adsorbate. The first major challenge in the field of adsorption modeling is the choice of the most adsorbat and most adsorbent, mainly in terms of high capacity and adsorption speed, high selectivity and low cost. The next real challenge is to clearly identify the adsorption mechanism, in particular the interactions involved in the adsorbent/adsorbate interaction. Adsorption properties and balance data, known as adsorption isotherms, describe how the adsorbate reacts with the adsorbent and therefore are crucial for choice and wider application. This paper deals with adsorption of waste disperse dye from aqueous solution to activated carbon that is made from waste cotton textile from the ready-to-wear garments. This waste is a byproduct during the cutting and sewing process during the fabrication of cotton garments. The goal is to use this waste cotton material, to produce active coal from it and to use it to remove colored waste water after textile dyeing, i.e. removing disperse textile dye by adsorption on activated carbon. The obtained results showed the potential in the production of activated carbon which successfully removes the dispersed dye from the solution, e.g. from wastewater after textile dyeing.