Magnetic adsorbent based on the electric arc furnace dust for the removal of methylene blue dye from aqueous solution

There are different solutions to manage industrial sewage, and recently reusing the useful materials in sewage is a trending topic among environmentalists. In this study, electric arc furnace dust (EAFD), a by‐product of the steelmaking industry, and finding a way to it reuse will be the main topic of this article. EAFD with 37% iron (Fe) content as the magnetic adsorbents has a good ability to treat contaminated water. The batch method was used to evaluate the effective parameters for removing methylene blue with a magnetic adsorbent, such as the initial concentrations of dye, the pH of the solution, time dependency, and the amount of adsorbent. The results showed that 3 g of the adsorbent could remove 93 ± 1% of the methylene blue from the 100 ml of an aqueous solution with an initial concentration of 5 ppm during 20 min at pH = 6. Kinetic data and the adsorption isotherms were better fitted with the pseudo‐second‐order model ( R 2  = 0.99) and Freundlich models ( R 2  = 0.97), respectively, which confirmed the chemisorption. The real sample's recovery results with three replicate confirmed the MB removal was dramatically reduced by more than 80%.