Highly efficient removal of antibiotics and dyes from water by the modified carbon nanofibers composites with abundant mesoporous structure

Abstract

In this work, a novel modified carbon nanofibers composites were prepared via electrospinning, facile hydrothermal process and carbonization. The composites combined the advantage of the carbon nanofibers (CNFs) and β-cyclodextrin based carbon nanoparticles (CNPs) which gained much higher specific surface area (3561.59 m2⋅g−1), larger total pore volume (4.78 cm3⋅g−1) and more abundant mesoporous structure (4.63 cm3⋅g−1) than that of pure carbon nanofibers. And the adsorption performances for tetracycline (TC) and methylene blue (MB) were systematically studied. The optimal pH values were 6 for TC and 11 for MB. The adsorption capacity remained stable under the presence of Na+ and Cl－ in solution and slightly decreased due to the disturbance of humic acid. The maximum adsorption capacities of the CNFs@CNPs at 298 K reached 543.48 mg⋅g−1 and 746.27 mg·g−1 for TC and MB, respectively. Their high adsorption performance and the basic fiber skeleton of porous structure could maintain after 5 consecutive cycles. Moreover, to further improve the practical application of the material, the adsorption performance towards TC and MB in natural water was also investigated. This work demonstrated that the CNFs@CNPs can be an efficient and practical adsorbent for antibiotics and dyes remove from wastewater.