Abstract
Low cost fabrication of water treatment polymer materials directly from biomass resources is urgently needed in recent days. Herein, a compressive alginate sponge (AS) is prepared from seaweed biomass resources through a green two-step lyophilization method. This material is much different from conventional oven-, air-, vacuum-dried alginate-based adsorbents, which show limitations of shrinkage, rigidness, tight nonporous structure and restricted ions diffusion, hindering its practical applications, and was used to efficiently remove methylene blue (MB), a main colorful contaminant in dye manufacturing, from wastewater. The batch adsorption studies are carried out to determine the impact of pH, contact time and concentration of dye on the adsorption process. The maximum adsorption capacity can be obtained at 1279 mg g−1, and the shape-moldable AS can be facilely utilized as a fixed-bed absorption column, providing an efficient approach for continuous removal of MB within a short time. It is also important that such a compressive AS can be regenerated by a simple squeezing method while retaining about 70% capacity for more than ten cycles, which is convenient to be reused in practical water treatment. Compressive AS demonstrates its merits of high capability, large efficiency and easy to recycle as well as low cost resources, indicating widespread potentials for application in dye contaminant control regarding environmental protection.
Highlights
Industrial developments led to the undesirable environmental problems in the world, especially water pollution [1,2,3]
The Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) analysis and XRD pattern revealed that the carboxyl groups penetrated in the alginate sponge (AS) network and the AS has none of the distinct crystalline formation (Figure 1e,f)
A compressive AS was prepared from seaweed biomass resources via a green two-step lyophilization method, which was used to remove methylene blue (MB) from wastewater for pollutant control
Summary
Industrial developments led to the undesirable environmental problems in the world, especially water pollution [1,2,3]. The development of industrially applicable and efficient treatments for dye containing effluents is urgently needed [12,13,14] Technologies such as coagulation/flocculation [15], biological treatment [16], oxidation or ozonation [17], membrane separation [18], electrochemical methodology [19] and adsorption [20] have been extensively applied to remove dye pollutants from wastewater. A number of adsorbent materials, such as activated carbon [25], mesoporous silica [26], hybrid xerogel [27], nanoporous alumina [28], zeolites [29] and carbon-based nanomaterials [13], have demonstrated their capability as an effective adsorbent for dye contaminants Their widespread use in water treatment is sometimes restricted due to its high cost and complexity of material preparation
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