Simultaneous biosorption properties of three
cationic dyes (Methylene blue, Crystal violet and Safranin)
on Sargassum glaucescens were studied. In the most of
previous papers in the field of dye biosorption, one dye or
dyes with nearly separate spectra were used and dye concentration
was determined by Beer’s law at different λmax.
Significant of this study is application of dyes with highly
overlapped spectra (as many real situations) that their concentrations
can be determined by chemometric methods.
Plackett–Burman design was applied to identify the most
significant factors, Box–Behnken design was used to determine
optimal conditions, and principal component-wavelet
neural network was used for the simultaneous determination
of dye concentrations in ternary solutions. The optimum
biosorption conditions were determined as dye concentration
10−4 mol L−1, biosorbent dosage 0.1 g L−1
and biosorbent particle size 0.188 μm. At this condition,
maximum biosorption capacity was 0.80 mmol g−1. The
biosorption process was slightly slower in the ternary system
comparing with single system which was related to
competition phenomena between dyes. It was found that
the overall biosorption data were described by the pseudosecond-
order kinetic model. Fourteen isotherm models
were applied to experimental data, and