Highly efficient and rapid removal of Congo red dye from textile wastewater using facile synthesized Mg/Ni/Al layered double hydroxide

Layered double hydroxides (LDH) are compounds with unique structures of hydroxide functional groups on their surfaces, and they have the proper arrangement of divalent and trivalent cations to adjust their unique catalytic actions. LDH was synthesized utilizing the co-precipitation technique and was thermally treated at 300 °C. The prepared compounds were chemically and structurally elucidated using FT-IR, XRD, SEM, BET, TG-DTA, and XPS characterization. We found that the thermal treatment of the prepared magnesium/nickel-LDH resulted in dehydration and dehydroxylation in its chemical structure. The crystallinity, the surface area, and the pore volume of the formed meso- and micropores were improved considerably after the thermal treatment. The efficiency of the uptake process was increased from 84 to 97% after the thermal treatment process, and the adsorption process tracked the Freundlich adsorption isotherm and pseudo-second-order kinetic model. The kinetics indicated the occurrence of three stages, and the diffusion of dye molecules into the pores was the rate-determining step. Different real water sample treatments showed the applicability of the thermally treated Mg/Ni/Al-LDH in the treatment process under optimized conditions. The presented mechanism of the uptake process using the prepared compounds comprises several interactions between the dye molecules and the thermally treated Mg/Ni/Al-LDH. The study presented the new application for Mg/Ni/Al-LDH in the as-prepared and thermally treated forms to uptake Congo-red (CR) dye from textile effluents.