• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
• /
• v.28 no.3
• /
• pp.270-275
• /
• 2006

The cultivated pearls collected for the study were pretreated through the removal of contaminants and the surface bleaching for easy dyeing. Coloring of pearls are necessary after selecting dyes adsorbable to the Conchiolin layer, a kind of hard protein formed in the seawater, covering the surface of the pretreated pearls. Dyes adsorbable to the Conchiolin layers are mostly basic dyes such as Rhodamine 6G(R6G), Rhodamine B(RB), Methylene Blue(MB) etc. and the binary and ternary competitive adsorption were performed by mixing two or three dyes together. The multi-dye adsorption data were compared with the predictions from the ideal adsorbed solution theory(IASI) combined with the single-dye adsorption model, the Langmuir or the Redlich-Peterson(RP) model. The quality of prediction was compared by using determination coefficient($R^2$) and standard deviation(SSE) values. Predictions from the IAST were found to be in good agreement with the data for the R6G/RB binary adsorption to the pearl layers not fractionated with their size, except for the adsorption data for RB at high concentrations. Among the three binary adsorption systems, R6G/RB, R6G/MB, and MB/RB, only the RB sorption data in the R6G/RB binary system was in poor agreement with the IAST prediction. Competitive adsorption data in ternay systems were in good agreement with the predictions from the IAST except for the RB data.