Continuous successive cycles of biosorption and desorption of acid red 27 dye using water hyacinth leaves as an effective, economic, and ecofriendly biosorbent

We investigated the capacity of water hyacinth leaves (LEC) to biosorb 75 mg/L acid red 27 (AR27) in a continuous system comprising 30 successive biosorption/desorption cycles in a packed-bed column at pH 2.0 and 56.5 L/m²·h volumetric flux. Using 0.025 M NaHCO₃ eluent at 113 L/m²·h volumetric flux, all the dye was desorbed (100% desorption efficiency) from the loaded LEC biomass within 5–6 h. The same biosorbent was used for 147.5 consecutive days. The AR27 biosorption capacity, breakthrough time, and exhaustion time decreased from 69.4 to 34.5 mg/g, 74.81 to 14.1 h, and 101.1 to 34.1 h, respectively, and the critical bed height increased from 1.04 to 2.35 cm, as the number of biosorption/desorption cycles increased from 1 to 30. LEC life factor based on biosorption capacity predicted that the packed bed would be exhausted after 51.95 cycles. LEC is a promising biosorbent for bioremediation of AR27-laden wastewaters.