Abstract
Pyrogenic carbon is widespread in soil due to wildfires, soot deposition, and intentional amendment of pyrolyzed waste biomass (biochar). Interactions between engineered carbon nanoparticles and natural pyrogenic carbon (char) are unknown. This study first employed transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) to interpret the superstructure composing aqueous fullerene C60 nanoparticles prepared by prolonged stirring of commercial fullerite in water (nC60-stir). The nC60-stir was a superstructure composed of face-centered cubic (fcc) close-packing of near-spherical C60 superatoms. The nC60-stir superstructure (≈100 nm) reproducibly disintegrated pecan shell biochar pellets (2 mm) made at 700 °C into a stable and homogeneous aqueous colloidal (<100 nm) suspension. The amorphous carbon structure of biochar was preserved after the disintegration, which only occurred above the weight ratio of 30,000 biochar to nC60-stir. Favorable hydrophobic surface interactions between nC60-stir and 700 °C biochar likely disrupted van der Waals forces holding together the amorphous carbon units of biochar and C60 packing in the nC60 superstructure.
Highlights
Aqueous fullerene C60 colloids prepared by the extended stirring in water or sonication-assisted solvent exchange are frequently considered within the environmental sciences community to be aggregates of individual 60-carbon molecules[1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
Biochars are hereby denoted by the feedstock acronym and pyrolysis temperature, e.g., pecan shell feedstock (PS25) and biochar produced at 700 °C (PS700)
Grand Canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) density functional theory (DFT) analysis of CO2 isotherm indicated a progressive increase in the surface area of biochars from 271 to 542 m2 g−1 as a function of pyrolysis temperature (400– 700 °C, Table S1)
Summary
Aqueous fullerene C60 colloids (nC60) prepared by the extended stirring in water or sonication-assisted solvent exchange are frequently considered within the environmental sciences community to be aggregates of individual 60-carbon molecules[1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Previous studies show that the fcc packing of the C60 superstructure is preserved in the aqueous nC60 formed by sonication of fullerite powder in water (without solvent)[22], solvent (toluene or THF) exchange[22,23], prolonged stirring[12], or grinding and suspension of the ground material[14].
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