Enhancing adsorption property of Engelhard Titanosilicate-10 through incorporation of graphene oxide

Abstract

Engelhard Titanosilicate-10 (ETS-10) has been studied widely for its adsorption and photocatalytic properties. The properties can be enhanced through various chemical approaches, such as modification of ETS-10 active sites with transition metal. In this work, graphene oxide incorporated ETS-10 (as GO/ETS-10) was prepared by refluxing the ETS-10 powder and GO suspension in water medium. The obtained GO/ETS-10, as revealed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), was chemically bound through the carbon atoms of GO and the oxygen atoms on the surface of ETS-10. The GO/ETS-10 composite has shown exceptional adsorption properties towards cationic methylene blue (MB) in comparison to ETS-10 alone. However, results have shown that the GO/ETS-10 has poor adsorption affinity towards anionic methyl orange (MO) in water. The adsorption isotherms of GO/ETS-10 composite towards MB was best fitted to the Langmuir isotherm with maximum adsorption capacity of 286 mg·g−1 which was about 2 times higher than adsorption capacity of ETS-10 alone, i.e. 135 mg·g−1. Besides, adsorption kinetics of GO/ETS-10 was best fitted to the pseudo-second order model revealing that the chemisorption was dominant throughout the adsorption process. Considering the nature of GO/ETS-10 that is composed from less harmful elements, it has good potential in the environment remediation, such as water and air purification, with a good selectivity towards cationic molecules.