Tailoring the surface functional groups of biochar for enhanced adsorption and degradation of pharmaceutically active compounds

Abstract

In this study, orange peel biochar (OPBC) was synthesized through a pyrolysis process. Decoration with two specific functional groups (i.e., –COOH and NH2) was performed through a ball milling-assisted modification process to yield the respective biochars (i.e., OPBC-COOH and OPBC-NH2). Both OPBC-COOH and OPBC-NH2 demonstrated excellent adsorption capacities for sulfamethoxazole (SMX) and carbamazepine (CBZ), and hydrogen bonding between the pharmaceuticals and BCs followed the primary adsorption mechanism. In addition, both OPBC-COOH and OPBC-NH2 (0.3 g/L) exhibited high degradation efficiencies for SMX (10 mg/L, 87 %; 92 %) and CBZ (10 mg/L, 73 %; 83 %) when peroxymonosulfate (PMS, 1 mM) was present. The scavenging experiments confirmed that electron transfer and radical/non-radical pathways (·OH and 1O2) are mainly responsible for the degradation of SMX and CBZ, respectively. It was also proven that the oxygen- and nitrogen-containing surface functional groups on BC are important for activating PMS for the degradation of organic pollutants. These findings provide new insights into the effects of functional groups on BC for the degradation of contaminants of emerging concern.