(Bio)sensors are integral to various aspects of daily life, contributing to safety, monitoring, and awareness.

The ability of NH ₂ -UiO-66 to remove the cationic dye rhodamine B (RhB) and the anionic dyes indigo carmine (IC) and orange 2 (O2) was evaluated.

In this work, biomass lignocellulosic materials extracted via chemical and physical treatments from bean and pistachio pod waste were used for the optimized elimination of Indigo Carmine (IC) from aqueous medium, using a design of experiments methodology. The physicochemical properties of the studied materials (raw and treated counterparts) used for the sorption of IC were investigated by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled with EDX, and thermal analysis. Key variables influencing the adsorption of IC, namely the initial IC concentration, the pH of the solution, the stirring time and the mass of adsorbents, were optimized by the central composite design (CCD) with three center points, the measured response being the amount of IC adsorbed. The optimal conditions obtained from the statistical analysis for the removal of IC were as follows: maximum adsorbed amounts of IC: 1.81 mg/g, 2.05 mg/g, 3.56 mg/g; 7.42 mg/g, 8.95 mg/g, 15.35 mg/g, for raw bean pods (RBS), BST1 and BST2 (bean pods chemically treated), and for raw pistachio pods (RPS), PST1 and PST2 (pistachio pods chemically treated), respectively. The pseudo-second-order nonlinear kinetics model well described the IC adsorption kinetics for RBS, BST1 and BST2, while the Elovich model was properly fitted by RPS, PST1, and PST2 biomaterials data. The Freundlich isotherm best described the shrinkage of IC on different sorbents. The good correlation of the experimental data of the IC with respect to the Freundlich isotherm indicated a multilayer adsorption with heterogeneous adsorption sites and different energies. The interest of this work consisted in developing analytical methods for the treatment of water polluted by dyes by using biosorbents, local biological materials widely available and inexpensive. The results collected in this work highlighted the interesting structural, morphological, and physico-chemical properties of the agro-waste used in the study, which properties allowed an important fixation of the target dye in solution. The research showed that the agro-waste used in the study are possible precursors to locally manufacture adsorbents at low cost, thus allowing the efficient removal of waste and dyes in liquid effluents.

This work elucidates the thermo-kinetics of the thermal conversion of cameroonian kaolin to metakaolin as the main product. The thermokinetical parameters (activation energy E_a and pre-exponential factor A) for the kaolin conversion were calculated using model-free methods, i.e. the Kissinger–Akahira–Sunrose (KAS) and the Flynn–Wall–Ozawa (FWO) method, and differential methods (Kissinger and Ozawa) additionally including iterative procedures for KAS and FWO methods (KAS-Ir; FWO-Ir). The cameroonian kaolin was heat-treated using three different heating rates, i.e. 5, 20 and 40 K min⁻¹, leading to metakaolin samples named MK-(5), MK-(20) and MK-(40). The TGA analysis showed a total mass loss of ∼12.5% in two steps related to the dehydration (step 1) and dehydroxylation (step 2). The E_a of the two steps were most accurately determined using the iterative procedures KAS-Ir and FWO-Ir. The average E_a values were 88.44/88.58 kJ mol⁻¹ for step 1 and 261.85/261.91 kJ mol⁻¹ for step 2, for the KAS-Ir and FWO-Ir models, respectively. The most probable mechanism function was determined by the multiple heating rate method (MHR) and the Coats-Redfern method. The kinetic analyses showed that the dehydroxylation of kaolin is controlled by a random nucleation and subsequent growth mechanism (G₄) and a second order chemical reaction (F₂). Thermodynamic parameters, namely the entropy ΔS^≠, the enthalpy ΔH^≠ and Gibbs free energy ΔG^≠, were evaluated. The average values of ΔS^≠, ΔH^≠ and ΔG^≠ using both the KAS-Ir and FWO-Ir models exhibited less than 5% deviation. The obtained metakaolin samples were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR).