Background and Objective: Existence of dye in water resources and wastewater can cause the environmental problems that must be removed from water. There has been some increase in the use of low-cost adsorbent substances as sewage treatment over recent years. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to optimize dye (RO16) removal from aqueous solutions by quarternary ammonium chloride (C₆H₁₅Cl₂NO) modified sunflower stem using Response Surface Method and Box–Behnken methods.

Materials and Methods: This is an experimental study. The batch experiment was conducted  to evaluate the effects of independent variables such as pH, dye concentration, dosage sorbent and contact time. Then experimental, Response Surface and Box–Behnken methods were applied to appraise the effects of these variables. One-way Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied for data analysis. 

Results: The consequences showed that dye removal efficiency intensified by increasing the adsorbent dosage and contact time and decreasing the pH and initial dye concentration. Maximum and the inimum of adsorption rates were 90% and 21%, respectively. High value for R² (95.7%) and adjusted R² (90.6%) show that removal of dye can be described by Response Surface Method. One-way ANOVA showed (p < 0.001) that linear model is the best model for determining the interaction variables.

Conclusion: Response Surface Method can be useful for optimization the removal of dye and modified sunflower stem can be used successfully for dye infiltration.

Key words: Adsorption, Dye reactive orange 16, Modified sunflower stem, Response surface method, Box–Behnken model

Funding: This research was funded by Babol University of Medical Sciences.

Conflict of interest: None declared.

Ethical approval: The Ethics Committee of Babol University of Medical Sciences approved the study.

How to cite this article: Amouei A., Asgharnia H.A., Karimian K., Mahdavi Y., Balarak D., Ghasemi  S.M. Optimization of Dye Reactive Orange 16 (RO16) Adsorption by Modified Sunflower Stem Using Response Surface Method from Aqueous Solutions J RafsanjanUniv Med Sci 2016 14(10): 813-826. [Farsi]