Incorporation of humic acid into biomass derived carbon for enhanced adsorption of phenol

Min Song,Dandan Chen,Fanyue Meng,Bing Song,Yuexing Wei,Fei Sun

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-56425-8

Min Song, Dandan Chen + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-56425-8

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Journal: Scientific Reports	Publication Date: Dec 1, 2019
Citations: 12	License type: open-access

Affiliation: Southeast University, Nanjing Normal University

Abstract

In the present work, the biomass derived carbon decorated with humic acid (HC), was synthesized through impregnation method for the adsorption of phenol from water environment. Humic acids contain more oxygen-containing functional groups and hydrogen bonds, which promotes the binding between HC and phenol molecules. The results indicated that the adsorption performance of HC to phenol was better than that of commercial activated carbon. Moreover, in addition to physical absorption, the chemical reaction between carboxylic groups on the carbon surface and hydroxyl in phenol also played an important role during the process. The adsorption behavior of HC was described by equilibrium and kinetics parameters. Pseudo-second order model can describe the adsorption process well. Langmuir model was more suitable for the equilibrium adsorption data fitting, indicating that the adsorption mechanism of phenol on carbon surface tends to be monolayer adsorption. Considering practical application, UV254, chemical oxygen demand (COD) and ammonia from raw wastewater were selected as target contaminants and the corresponding adsorption experiments were carried out. The results displayed that HC exhibited excellent adsorption performance, especially for UV254, indicating that as-prepared carbon material had potential application for the control of certain organic pollutants in actual wastewater.

Highlights

In the present work, the biomass derived carbon decorated with humic acid (HC), was synthesized through impregnation method for the adsorption of phenol from water environment
The results indicated that Activated carbon (AC) treated by H3PO4 was possessed of good adsorption performance for Rhodamine B (Rh B) and methylene blue (MB)
It can be clearly observed that rice husk-carbon (RC) was possessed of a high surface area of 1196.79 m2/g and a large pore volume of 0.3037 cm3/g

Summary

Introduction

The biomass derived carbon decorated with humic acid (HC), was synthesized through impregnation method for the adsorption of phenol from water environment. With the excellent texture and surface properties, AC is a suitable material for adsorption treatment of some organic compounds in wastewater. One of the most obvious defects was that there were fewer functional groups on the surface of carbon, which significantly limited its adsorption performance for the removal of organic matters in water[14,15].

Results

Conclusion