Adsorption Behaviors of Cationic Methylene Blue and Anionic Reactive Blue 19 Dyes onto Nano-Carbon Adsorbent Carbonized from Small Precursors
Caizhen Liang,
Qingshan Shi,
Jin Feng,
Junwei Yao,
Hui Huang,
Xiaobao Xie
Affiliations
Caizhen Liang
Institute of Microbiology, Guangdong Academy of Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Applied Microbiology Southern China, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Microbial Culture Collection and Application, Guangdong Open Laboratory of Applied Microbiology, Guangzhou 510070, China
Qingshan Shi
Institute of Microbiology, Guangdong Academy of Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Applied Microbiology Southern China, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Microbial Culture Collection and Application, Guangdong Open Laboratory of Applied Microbiology, Guangzhou 510070, China
Jin Feng
Institute of Microbiology, Guangdong Academy of Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Applied Microbiology Southern China, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Microbial Culture Collection and Application, Guangdong Open Laboratory of Applied Microbiology, Guangzhou 510070, China
Junwei Yao
Institute of Microbiology, Guangdong Academy of Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Applied Microbiology Southern China, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Microbial Culture Collection and Application, Guangdong Open Laboratory of Applied Microbiology, Guangzhou 510070, China
Hui Huang
Institute of Microbiology, Guangdong Academy of Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Applied Microbiology Southern China, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Microbial Culture Collection and Application, Guangdong Open Laboratory of Applied Microbiology, Guangzhou 510070, China
Xiaobao Xie
Institute of Microbiology, Guangdong Academy of Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Applied Microbiology Southern China, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Microbial Culture Collection and Application, Guangdong Open Laboratory of Applied Microbiology, Guangzhou 510070, China
In this work, an innovative nano-carbon material (N-CM) adsorbent was reported for exploring its adsorption behaviors toward cationic methylene blue (MB) and anionic reactive blue 19 (RB19) pollutants. The proposed N-CM was synthesized by a one-step solvothermal treatment of citric acid and zinc gluconate small precursors. N-CM consists of nanosheets that have an advantageous specific surface area, large sp2/sp3 hybridized domains, and abundant nitrogen/oxygen-containing surface functional groups. The synergistic effects of these features are conducive to the MB and RB19 adsorption. Different from anionic RB19 adsorption (79.54 mg/g) by the cooperative π-π stacking and hydrogen bonding, cationic MB adsorbed onto N-CM mainly by the electrostatic attraction at the natural pH solution (> pHpzc), with an adsorption capacity up to 118.98 mg/g. Interestingly, both MB and RB19 adsorption conformed to the pseudo-second order kinetic (R2 ≥ 0.995) and Langmuir isothermal (R2 ≥ 0.990) models, accompanied by similar maximum monolayer adsorption capacities of 120.77 and 116.01 mg/g, respectively. Their adsorption processes exhibited spontaneously endothermic characteristics. Moreover, N-CM showed superior selective capability toward MB in different mixed dye systems, with high removal efficiencies of 73–89%. These results demonstrate that the high-performance carbon adsorbent prepared from small precursors via low-temperature carbonization shows great potentials in wastewater treatment.