Abstract
Graphene based aerogel has become one of the most likely functional adsorption materials that is applicable to purify various contaminated water sources, such as dye wastewater, because of its high porosity, structural stability, large specific surface area, and high adsorption capacity. In this study, chitosan and graphene oxide were first selected as the matrix to prepare the composite hydrogel through the hydrothermal method, which was further frozen and dried to obtain the target aerogel. The microscopic structures and adsorption capacity of the composite aerogel were then characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and N2 (nitrogen) physical adsorption and desorption tests. The results show that the specific surface area of the composite aerogel was reached at 297.431 m2/g, which is higher than that of graphene oxide aerogel and chitosan aerogel. The aperture was reduced to about 3 nm. The adsorption rate of the composite aerogel for the methyl orange solution was as high as 97.2% at pH = 1, and the adsorption capacity was 48.6 mg/g. The adsorption process of the composite aerogel satisfies the Langmuir equation and can be described by the second-order adsorption kinetics. In addition, it is worth noting that this composite aerogel can provide a striking adsorption characteristic on methyl orange due to the combining effects from massive amino groups on chitosan and the structural conjugation of graphene oxide.
Highlights
With the improvement to the aesthetic requirements of products, dyes have been widely used in many fields
It can be seen from the morphology that the CS/graphene oxide (GO) aerogel prepared by the hydrothermal method had more surface folds and more dense pores, which made the specific surface area of the chitosan and graphene oxide (CS/GO) aerogel higher than CS/GOc and CS/GOS
The data demonstrate that the methyl orange (MO)-adsorption efficiency of the CS/GO aerogel, prepared by the hydrothermal method, reached as far as 96.6%, and was significantly higher than that of the aerogels obtained by the chemical crosslinking method (89.2%) and sol-gel method (59.45%)
Summary
With the improvement to the aesthetic requirements of products, dyes have been widely used in many fields. Tremendous dye wastewater will be continuously produced and released to the surrounding areas during the period of industrial production, which results in hazardous environmental pollution [1,2,3]. It is very important to effectively remove dyes from polluted water sources. Adsorption is one of the most promising and reliable techniques for removing pollutants from wastewater [4]. Graphene oxide aerogel is a three-dimensional network structure material with graphene as the cross-linked body and gas as the dispersion medium. Graphene oxide aerogel retains the nano-characteristics of graphene, and solves the dispersion difficulties of graphene
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