Evaluation of Dye Adsorption Onto SBA-15 Using Image Analysis

Abstract

In this work, the reliability of image analysis for the numerical evaluation of Basic Red 46 (BR 46) dye adsorption process was studied. The image analysis was carried out on dye adsorbed onto SBA-15 mesoporous silica, by use of Image-Pro Plus software. Pixel-specific calibration curves were derived and used to obtain dye concentration from the three different primary color channels (red, green, and blue) recorded at each pixel. In order to establish credibility of this method for quantification of adsorption processes, these data were compared with dye adsorption parameters obtained by UV-vis analysis. Among the three different primary color channels, the best results were obtained when the blue color channel was applied. In this case, the average relative error was 0.86%. The obtained results showed that a dye adsorbed on SBA-15 can be determined with the use of Image-Pro Plus with the same sensitivity as with the use of spectrophotometric analysis for the determination of changes in dye concentration during the adsorption process.