Preparation of N-doped graphitic carbon nanofibers composites via pyrolysis strategy and its application in the antibiotics treatment

Abstract

In this study, we employed carbon nanofibers (CNFs) and melamine-formaldehyde resin-based N-doped graphitic carbon spheres (MFC) as precursor to prepare N-doped graphitic carbon nanofibers composites (CNFs-@-MFC) through pyrolysis strategies under nitrogen atmosphere. Compared with CNFs, the incorporation of MFC made CNFs-@-MFC have superior specific surface area (1295.33 m2 g−1), higher percent of nitrogen content (4.33%) and abundant porous structures, resulting in highly-efficient removal of tetracycline hydrochloride (TC) and ciprofloxacin (CIP). The maximum adsorption capacity of CNFs-@-MFC towards TC and CIP were 546.5 mg/g and 549.6 mg/g, respectively. In addition, the CNFs-@-MFC still maintain good adsorption performances towards pollutants after 5 cycles. The adsorptive mechanism studies indicated that the hydrogen bonding, pore capture and π-π interaction played the main functions in the antibiotics adsorption process by CNFs-@-MFC. This study not only provided a novel strategy to prepare the highly-efficient porous N-doped graphitic carbon nanofibers, but also evaluated the application prospect of the absorbent for antibiotics removal.