Combining biological and chemical methods to disassemble of cellulose from corn straw for the preparation of porous carbons with enhanced adsorption performance

Abstract

In this study, we used a combination of chemical and biological pretreatment methods to extract cellulose from corn straw with a relative content of 92.40%. The adsorption performance and mechanism of the prepared porous carbon were investigated using synthetic dye malachite green (MG) and antibiotic tetracycline hydrochloride (TC) as adsorption models. The kinetic studies suggested that the adsorption followed the pseudo-second-order model and Bangham model. The Freundlich isotherm model fitted the adsorption data best for both MG and TC. The thermodynamic studies showed that the adsorption of MG and TC by adsorbents were spontaneous and endothermic in nature. In addition, the adsorption performance was maintained at 50% of the original value after five cycles. More importantly, this method not only improved the adsorption performance of prepared porous carbon materials but also provides a reference for the application of other lignocellulosic materials for cellulose extraction.