Abstract

Objective This work is aimed at expanding the field of application of natural biomass for the treatment of dye waste effluents It is equally aimed at determining the dependency or otherwise of the effect of flow rate and bed height on the fixed bed adsorption of methylene blue dye onto Sphagnum cymbifolium moss Methods The biomass was characterized by scanning electron microscopy SEM for the determination of the morphology of the biomass The screened biomass samples were characterized at 1000X magnification 500X magnification and 250X magnification respectively for their surface morphologies This was done using a scanning electron microscope FEI-inspect OXFORD INSTRUMENTS-X-MAX which was equipped with an energy dispersive x-ray EDAX spectrophotometer employed for the elemental composition analyses It was equally characterized with Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy FTIR before and after adsorption to ascertain the functional groups responsible for the adsorption This was done using a Fourier Transformed Infrared FTIR spectrophotometer Perkin Elmer England in the wavelength range of 350-4000nm