Lychaete pellucida as a novel biosorbent for the biodegradation of hazardous azo dyes

The majority of textile wastes are made up of toxic dyes. Additionally, because these compounds are soluble, wastewater may include significant concentrations. In this work, the green alga Lychaete pellucida is used for the bioremoval of four common azo dyes, Reactive Blue 4 (RB4), Reactive Red 120 (RR120), Reactive Brilliant Yellow 3G (RBY3G), and Reactive Green12 (RG12), with the application of two models of sorption isotherms, Langmuir and Freundlich. The spectrophotometer method was used to identify optimum conditions (temperature, pH, dye concentrations, algal biomass, and contact time) to remove these dyes onto dry freshwater macroalgae. The optimum pH for L. pellucida was 8. The optimum biosorbent amount is 2 g/L. Then, the best-removed dye concentration was 5 mg/L, the optimum contact duration was 120 min, and the optimum temperature was 25 °C. Under optimum conditions, the percent of dye removal was about 95% for all used azo dyes. This is the first report on the use of Lychaete pellucida for the efficient biodegradation of hazardous azo dyes.