Green carbon induced super hydrophilic bioFoam filters for hazardous emerging pollutants removal and their sustainable value addition

Abstract

Solvothermal derived carbon (STC) offers unique characteristics due to their confined morphology, chemical functionality, surface acidity as well as high surface area. On the other hand, highly porous biofoam can be prepared using natural polymers with varying porosity and surface characteristics. Herein, we have prepared multi-functional STC induced biofoam (STC-BF) as a module-based device for water treatment applications. The biofoam was converted into highly porous architecture through lyophilisation of composite gel composed of Agar-Agar (Ar) and Chitosan (CS). The obtained STC-BF were studied for their stability, physical and chemical compositions using different analytical techniques such as ATR-IR, XPS, TGA, FE-SEM, Zeta potential. Furthermore, the stable characterized STC-BFs were tested as an adsorptive filter for removal of emerging pollutants like organic dyes involving methyl orange (MO), anions such as Chromate (CrO42−) and Fluoride (F−), and other emerging pollutants like Ciprofloxacin (CIP), Paracetamol (PAR), Dichlophenac (DIC), respectively. Detailed studies on STC, C-BF and STC-BF showed that the synergetic effect of both STC and bio-foam in the form of STC-BF exhibited an exceptionally high maximum adsorption capacity of 896.56 mg/g of MO, 387.56 mg/g for CIP, 142.89 mg/g for CrO42− ion and 31.45 mg/g for F− ion. Further, foam filters were tested for its real time and technological feasibility in which the universal foam filter showed a cumulative flux of ~400 L−1m−2h−1 with >90% rejection for MO, CIP and CrO42− ions and around 60% rejection for F− ions.