Comments concerning papers about cationic dyes sorption, published by Saeed et al. (2023), Tan et al. (2023) and Yıldız et al. (2023)

ABSTRACT

Recently, the three independent papers cited in the title were published in this journal, dealing with the sorption of cationic dyes on specially prepared solid sorbents. Although kinetics, isotherm and thermodynamics are three important components for the correct description of any sorption process, the authors of these original papers introduced several fundamental errors in these parts. Therefore, we present detailed analyses of these errors in the hope that this “Comment” paper will also be useful to other researchers (especially early career researchers) to avoid replicating such errors elsewhere in the future.

Research Highlights

Recently, three independent papers were published in this journal by Tan et al. (2023), Saeed et al. (2023), and Yıldız et al. (2023), all dealing with the sorption of cationic dyes on specially prepared solid sorbents. Although kinetics, isotherm and thermodynamics are important components for the correct description of any sorption process, several fundamental errors and inconsistencies have been identified. Therefore, we present detailed analyses of these errors in the hope that this paper will also be useful to other researchers (especially early career researchers) to avoid replicating such errors elsewhere in the future. Furthermore, the present authors emphasize that this paper is not intended to discredit the subject of the considered experimental studies, and they hope that these comments will be read in the spirit in which they are intended, i.e. as constructive criticism to produce better final scientific papers.

KEYWORDS:

• Scientific mistake
• sorption
• kinetics modeling
• isotherm modeling
• thermodynamic parameters

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01496395.2024.2349928

Credit Author statement

All authors have equal contributions to this paper.

Notes

¹ At the request of the Editor of Separation Science & Technology, we have compiled in a Supplementary Information file the Figures and Tables of the original articles discussed in our manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was received to assist with the preparation of this manuscript.